Lexi in the New York Times

Alexis gets featured in the New York Times!

“Spring break at the beach in California. Not the kind of beach you typically visit on spring break, but rather a beach on the south shore of Lake Tahoe — which, until very recently, was covered in a crust of ice. Nonetheless, it’s a fine little vacation: a freakishly talented pint-size snowboarder riding some of America’s most picturesque terrain, while men with video cameras tag along to shoot a movie…”

Lexi is not yet at a point where she can ride her snowboard full time. There is grade school, for instance, where she is in her third year of Spanish immersion. (“Estoy en segundo grado,” she says.) But already, at age 8, she has chosen a career path: to do the kinds of things on a snowboard that grown women don’t tend to do, let alone little girls. It hasn’t even been four years since her dad, Shawn, put her on a board, and already she’s redefining what is possible for a pipsqueak (her word, not mine) on a snowboard.

What’s left of the snow is clumped in dirty piles, and the film crew has scraped together enough to make a crude jump so that Lexi can soar from the steep front yard of a fancy lakefront house over a fence and down to the beach. By professional-snowboarder standards it’s a fairly simple jump — maybe eight feet high — but considering that it is an absolute wisp of a person preparing to make the leap, well, it’s plenty hairy.

Make the jump to the New York Times to continue reading.