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Living in a place where it only takes an inch of snow for schools to be closed and students to get out their heavy coats and gloves, it is bizarre to have a competitive snowboarder in Coppell’s midst.

Brandon Rainbolt is a junior at Coppell High School and has been snowboarding for eight years. Although many students at CHS have given snowboarding or skiing a try, very few can say that they have mastered the back flip or the “inverted 720” like Brandon has. For the past two years, he has been snowboarding competitively, tearing up the slopes and making quite an impression in competitions.

“When we went [snowboarding] a couple of winters ago, one of my friends who lives out there [in New Mexico] was doing flips and cool tricks and I didn’t just want to be the kid who was bad at it,” Rainbolt said. “So I started trying it and I started landing them, we moved out there so I could compete and actually be good at it.”

Though he started his snowboarding career young, his skill was advanced for his age and he proved to be a fast learner.

“When he first started [riding], he started out his first year skiing and then immediately went into snowboarding and never looked back,” Brandon’s father, Chris Rainbolt said.

Hoping to be a pro one day and compete in the Olympics, Brandon places first in most local competitions and won 20th place in Nationals held on Copper Mountain in Colorado. Living in Texas doesn’t seem to affect his dreams.

“Playing football helps me stay in shape, but I’m not far behind anybody else out there because they can’t snowboard during summer,” Brandon said.

In order for Brandon and his siblings to compete in the snowboarding events, his family moved to a winter condo in New Mexico.

“I moved the whole family from Coppell, where we are now, to New Mexico for winter season and we go from event to event,” Chris said. “We actually physically had to move out there and they had to enroll in schools out there then we come back, so that’s a little bit of a pain in the chest but it’s worth it to see them compete.”

Even though Brandon’s father does not snowboard, his siblings are competing in slalom, skiercross and slopestyle events this year and his younger brother, Dylan, was also a regional champion at the age of ten.

In competitions, Brandon’s main focus is on performing tricks. At these competitions, kids from the same age group compete and are judged on how well they do tricks and how clean they land various jumps.

Niko Haukebo, a friend of Brandon’s, competes against him in many of the competitions and believes that Brandon is a great competitor.

“He is a natural athlete with unlimited potential. He rides from the heart. When he gets focused he can land any trick he tries,” Haukebo said.

Once finals are over, Brandon will be moving to New Mexico in order to focus on snowboarding. He wants to take his career more seriously in hopes of getting a scholarship to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. In the meantime, Brandon uses his trampoline in his backyard to exercise and practice the challenging flips and tricks when not on the slopes.

“You can’t go out there and [compete at a competitive event] just winging it, competing at the level that Brandon is at takes a tremendous amount of work,” Chris said.

Above all, snowboarding has been a way for Brandon to do something he truly enjoys and is skilled at.

“It’s just fun. It has taught me that even if people think you can’t do something, you still can. It’s strange to have a kid from Oklahoma go to Nationals for snowboarding,” Brandon said.