The most important rule to follow when you’re a plumber is this: avoid biting your nails. There’s all sorts of nasty sh*t under there.
Maddy Schaffrick found that out shortly after her last FIS World Cup event in March of 2015. She had just spent the last six years on the U.S. Snowboard team, but she could barely remember the last two or three of them. Dropping into a halfpipe contest after contest, Schaffrick felt nerves that she had never felt before. Instead of facing them head on, she would try to disassociate, try to block them out. Just check out.
So after that last contest, Schaffrick retired at the age of 20. When those around her were hitting their prime, progressing in the pipe, the once-phenom decided she wanted out.
Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
“I never thought I’d snowboard again,” she told Snowboarder.
What do you do when you retire at the age of 20, though? Schaffrick had just moved back in with her parents, and they wanted her to pay rent. She didn’t have a college degree, she didn’t want to wait tables, and she wanted to work with her hands and move her body.
So Schaffrick thought she’d give the trades a shot. Construction sounded like a good idea, at first. So she asked a friend in Steamboat Springs, Colorado who owned a plumbing and heating company if he knew of anyone in need of new employees. He just so happened to be looking for an apprentice.
That lasted about a year and a half.
"I was pretty convinced that I was going to go live on a beach somewhere and never look (my snowboard) again,” Schaffrick said. “But it was one of those things where I was like, ‘man, I’m here in Steamboat. All of my friends are going to have season passes and be going up. I’m not going to just plumb every day and be happy, so I should probably get some sort of hobby and get a season pass.”
Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
Once the fall rolled around and the temperatures began to drop, Schaffrick found herself itching to get on snow again. She might not want to compete, but she was looking for an excuse to get back to it, and so she volunteered at the Steamboat Resort winter sports club for a free season pass. The job? Coaching six and seven-year-olds seven hours a week.
That was all it took. She fell back in love with snowboarding again. Her hiatus from the slopes didn’t even last an entire year.
“My biological clock was like ‘winter is coming, it’s time to start preparing,’” Schaffrick said with a laugh.
Schaffrick was teaching groms, and found her love of snowboarding again. The competitive side had changed what snowboarding had meant to her. She had resentment for the aspects of the sport that “took away her love of it,” but working with the kids brought her back to why she fell in love in the first place.
That kicked off the next seven years of Schaffrick’s life, as a coach for Steamboat’s Winter Sports club. She got the chance to snowboard in an entirely different way, and snowboard the way she wanted to. That helped her develop a personal style. Snowboarding became her own, rather than something done to appease a judging panel.
Photo: U.S. Snowboard Team
In 2022, Schaffrick began coaching for the U.S. team. During a 2022 trip to Saas Fe, she found herself talking to fellow pro-turned-coach JJ Thomas. She turned to him at one point and asked him bluntly: “I wonder if I could do this again.” Being at the top of the halfpipe with all the other athletes, it brought her back to the early days of competing, memories and feelings and emotions. She didn’t even know she felt that way about competing anymore.
Over the course of the next two years of coaching the team, she started feeling more like she could do pro snowboarding differently.
“At the end of last winter season, I just knew that if I didn't try, I would regret the hell out of it,” Schaffrick said. “And I kind of gotten to the point in my life where I know what regret feels like, and I'm not interested in that.
“I was like, I just need to try what, no matter what happens. I was like, I could freaking blow up first training camp and get injured or something, but at least I would have tried.”
There are still some looming regrets from Schaffrick’s first go-around as a pro. There was so much opportunity that she didn’t necessarily take advantage of. There was more money in snowboarding back then, and Schaffrick said she was making a solid yearly salary at the age of 15.
Schaffrick wasn’t always present. There are entire contests where she says she might not have landed a single run. Looking back, she wishes she applied herself a little more, partied a little less, somehow navigated this world meant for adults better as a teenager.
“I wish I did things so differently,” she said. “This coming back, this is proof to my present self and my younger self that I’m worthy….this sounds cheesy, but that I’m worthy of going after my own dreams and doing something that I love and being able to apply myself fully into it…This has been so much more of a journey about personal and soul growth, and it just so happened to be through snowboarding, which is the activity that I loved."
Then, the comeback came to fruition. Schaffrick made her first World Cup appearance in 10 years at China’s Secret Garden.
She started off her top-scoring run with a frontside stalefish. She threw a backside 540 on the next hit, then a crippler nose grab and an alley oop 360. She finished it off with switch a backside 540 and followed by a frontside 540. For the first time in who knows how long, Schaffrick stood atop a World Cup podium.
Things have been going well since then. Last month, Schaffrick got the call to compete in superpipe at X Games Aspen, something she last did 10 years prior. In March, she’ll head back to Aspen to compete in The Snow League, the new professional league started by Shaun White.
The ride has been a bit wild for Schaffrick. It’s also been a bit of a reclamation. It’s been key for her to stay present and in the moment.
“I’ve been trying to keep the blinders on, if you will, and not pay too much attention to what other people are saying, good or bad. I know my reasons for doing this are totally my own. My success back then was very much fueled by getting accolades for other people. I mean, I was a teenager. It feels good to have people be like ‘yo, you’re sick’ and be so fueled by other people’s opinions.”