‘Airtime Anna’ is top boarder

Long Beach is usually associated with surfing and other summertime activities. One girl is changing that, though, with her prowess on snow-covered slopes.

Anna Margiotta, 12, or “Airtime Anna” to her coaches, is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation in the United States of America Snowboard and Freeski Association’s Menehune Girls division, for 11- and 12-year-olds.

But don’t misunderstand: She’s not all about snow. She also surfs and skateboards, like so many of her friends in Long Beach.

“When you’re riding a snowboard, it’s like carving waves while surfing,” Anna explained on the phone from the USASA National Championship in Copper Mountain, Colorado. “Your knees are bent and you’re just sitting into a wave, kind of like carving. But the difference is, on a snowboard you’re putting pressure on your front foot, and on a surfboard, you’re putting pressure on your back foot.”

Anna specializes in slopestyle, a freestyle discipline in which snowboarders negotiate a course with rails, jumps and other obstacles. She has been snowboarding for five years now. Her father, Jim, taught all four of his children skiing first, and then they made the transition to snowboarding when they turned 7 or 8.

“I’ve never really liked skiing because of the hard boots, and whenever I’d fall, my legs would get tangled up,” Anna said. “I just didn’t find it as fun, because I did a lot of board sports like surfing and skateboarding while at home. I liked doing a lot of that, and when I got into snowboarding, I found it really fun, and just liked my riding style and flow.”

Her father noted the difficulty of his daughter’s discipline, saying that it combines two of the most difficult skills for any snowboarder, of any age, to master, rails and jumps. Anna was naturally good at it, he said, which eventually led her top ranking at the national championships this week, where she competed for five days, ending Wednesday.

She used to just ride the slopes with her dad, learning the basics and getting comfortable. Eventually, she got to the point where she needed more. So her father told her, “You have to join a team or do a program, because I want you to get with the other kids your age.” “She just wanted to ride with me,” Jim recounted, “and I said to my wife, ‘She’s just way too talented to leave her just riding with me.”

On one ski trip, to upstate Windham Mountain, they met a snowboard coach, and he told the Margiottas that, the way Anna jumped and rode rails, she could compete on a national level. So she joined Windham’s snowboard team, and sharpened her skills on mountains around the Catskills.

This was her first nationals, but the nerves and anxiousness didn’t hold her back. In fact, she felt more comfortable when she was actually competing.

“When I’m out there, I’m just kind of relaxed a little,” Anna said. “I was a little nervous, because it’s nationals, and you have to go big or go home. I’m just so happy I’m out here in the first place. That’s what my dad always tells me, to just try to relax and just have fun with it.”

“Slopestyle is an event at the Olympics and nobody goes to the Olympics without passing through USASA,” her father said. “I’m not saying she’s going to the Olympics or anything, but we’re really excited for her to get something like being named No. 1 in the nation.”

Anna attends Long Beach Catholic Regional School, which allowed her to miss a week of classes to prepare for the nationals.