Interview by: Freda Robin

Mel Simmons is living the dream… as a professional TTR snowboard judge, she gets paid to travel the world and watch her friends ride from the best seats in the house. That’s not to say it’s all cruisy – in some comps she judges up to 300 runs in just one day… We recently caught up with Mel, who will be heading to Mount Buller to judge the Dew Hut Jam this Saturday 31 July.

As a professional snowboard judge, what exactly do you do?

I get paid to watch my friends ride and then scale them out of a hundred… haha um, actually that’s exactly what I do. More specifically, I watch riders compete in freestyle snowboard competitions, then give them feedback by evaluating their performance on the day against set criteria.

How did you get into the field?

I blew out my knee in the warm up of a Slopestyle event way back when. I wasn’t in a lot of pain, I just couldn’t walk, so I dragged myself to the bench on the side of the course to recover and it turned out they were short a judge. Eight years later, a fistful of judge clinics, a couple of credentials, a bit of experience, and here I am…

What direction is snowboarding going in i.e. what do you see as the future?

If you’d asked me that question eight years ago, there’s no way I would’ve foreseen the insane progression we’ve all witnessed to date. In ’02, we could only witness half this reality button mashing ESPN’s Winter X Games. If you’d asked me that question even three years ago? Un-hucked triple corks on a straight jump?! Please… I mean look at Pipe where 22ft is now base rate. Grommets are spinning their age in Slope. You can’t keep a cap on freestyle snowboarding. You can’t contain it. Because of the mentality of snowboarders, that combination of creativity and the need to excel, always needing to one up themselves, better their peers, better their sport – snowboarding will only ever get bigger and better.

Why do you feel competition important to snowboarding?

The demand for new challenges is insatiable and contest organisers are charged with the task of meeting those challenges. Riders are constantly raising the perceived level of human capability and shattering those perceptions with the next level of progression. Events that present innovative course builds, features and formats all play a hand in pushing that progression.

What sort of comps are the most difficult to judge and why?

The Burton Global Open Series events. Not so much difficult, more it’s the amount of mental effort they require. You’re benching a huge competitor field of all levels of riding from Grom through to Pro level, over 3-5 competition days of Pipe, Slopestyle, a Junior Jam, a Big Air or Rail Jam – sometimes both. During qualifiers we’ll easily judge 300 odd runs in a day, throughout which you have to be mentally on point and maintain focus through the last run. It can be a long week, but we’re well compensated for that effort.

What do you think of the teams format that the Dew Hut Jam has going on?

Dew Hut Jam is LEGIT – it’s innovative in format and feature build, and it encourages riders to step up. I’m all about dynamic events that present new challenges, force new game plays… LOVE Team challenge formats. In contests, usually you rely solely on yourself to kill it and usually you only have yourself to blame if you kook it. It’s a team effort: if you scratch, your buddy goes down for it. So it’s on every rider to step up for their team mate. You get to see some pretty tight stuff laid down at the Dew Hut Jam…

Tell us about your day to day life…is it all work or is there some play?

Day to day, I’m the Sport Manager for New Zealand Snowboarding; there’s a bit of work involved there, I’m also the Southern Hemisphere Rep for the TTR World Tour which I’m super stoked about. Playtime rolls round between my Southern and Northern Hemisphere seasons, we always hit up somewhere warm, session the sun & surf for a couple months before returning to the snow. End of this season it’s off to Mexico for five weeks with a decent crew, early November before I’m to be back on the tour in December…

Speaking of play…tell us all about the perks

Haha… there are a ton of perks! It’s pretty much an all expenses paid ride when I leave home. And I get paid alright for what I do. The biggest perk for me though, are the people. I know you hear it all the time but it’s legit. The places I’ve been, the people I’ve been there with, travelled with, ridden with, partied with, conversed with, worked with, and the people I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting. Snowboarding is very much a people industry. Don’t get me wrong, snowboarding is rife with douchebags but they’re the ones that keep you on your toes! I guess you’re after the fun perks though?  Free travel, free gear, free passes, free bar-tabs, VIP this, all-access that… it’s a pretty sweet trip.

Would you recommend this career path to others? Is it really all about living the dream?

If you’re like me and too broken to actually ride yourself – or maybe like me, you’re just not a competitive person, you just have a need to be a part of it, then by all means definitely get into it. But it’s not for everyone. Judging is HARD. As a judge, if you’re not learning you’re stagnant. Snowboarding is constantly evolving and so too must you. You also have to learn to be pretty hard arsed, learn to stick to your guns. Someone’s always gonna be pissed about something. So like any job it has its moments, but for the most part? I’m certainly not complaining. I get to be part of some of the most high-calibre contests, centred around the most progressive action sport in the world. I’d say that’s a dream. Most definitely…