Just ride with it
Stephanie Schwartz is an extreme mountain sledder, an active spokesperson for snowmobiling and one goofy chick
Stephanie Schwartz is a woman playing a predominantly male game. Her riding ability, dedication and success with the sport has inspired many women to forget the stereotypes and get out there and ride.
Stephanie Schwartz jokes that she was conceived on a snowmobile. Throughout her life, sledding has been an integral part of her family and her career. Her father is Ron LaRoy, the membership chairman of the Revelstoke Snowmobile Club, and he never left Schwartz at home when he went sledding. Her older brother, Jason, also helped pave the way for Schwartz on a sled and she had to work diligently to keep up with them. This year, the LaRoys were awarded the Canadian outstanding snowmobile family of the year from the Canadian Council of Snowmobile Organizations.
Stephanie Schwartz
As a woman in a predominantly male sport, Schwartz has had her times of ups and downs. However, her career in snowmobiling has sky-rocketed and the fact that she is a woman has perhaps helped drastically. Her first job offer happened because someone saw her riding.
"My brother and I were up on the hill riding one day and we knew some people from Red Deer, Alberta," said Schwartz. "(One of them was a salesman) from a dealership and he saw me and talked to a guy that knew me, and said 'what's up with this girl? She knows her sled stuff,' and it was as simple as that. He called me and said 'are you interested in a job?' "
Currently, Schwartz has her fingers in the corporate side of snowmobiling and has been in many extreme mountain snowmobile movies. She was first recognized by Slednecks—an extreme mountain riding film company—and she has moved on to work with Tahoe Films Ltd. This winter she will be filming with Team Summit in California and Jeff Aiello, the camera man from Extreme Home Makeover.
"They had seen me in a previous film through Tahoe Films called Sled Heads," said Schwartz. "Jeff does this segment each year where he puts one woman in that can really ride. It is a small community when you are a girl in the sled industry, and they had asked over the last couple of years if I was interested. I had actually given up filming for a couple of years because it was a boys game and I was tired of it …but they are a different group than I had ever experienced."
In Schwartz's spare time she and her husband go back to Revelstoke to ride with her family. They have just bought a house there and Schwartz puts on ladies ride weekends through Glacier House Resort. Previously, she hosted the weekends six times a year, but because of her busy schedule, she hosts one weekend each sledding season. Schwartz said she had been pushing for more women in the sport and men would constantly approach her and say, 'oh I wish my wife or girlfriend would ride.' Through these statements, Schwartz found her niche market and developed her own ladies weekend—all of the money from the weekends go to cancer research.
"Guys don't have the patience to teach," said Schwartz, "and even if my husband is trying to tell me something, I don't listen, so it turned into a girls weekend. The husbands drop off the women on Friday night and they don't see them again until Sunday. It covers everything from loading and unloading to avalanche safety, but I encourage them to take their own courses. Some of them want to learn how to mountain ride, some want to learn to jump, and some want to learn to carve…it's everything and anything in between."
In addition, Schwartz and her friend Darcy are working on starting their own version of the Way Out Women (WOW) relay—a cross-Canada snowmobile ride that raised money for breast cancer. Unfortunately, the WOW relay was cancelled in 2006 and has not happened since. Schwartz said the relay was for such a great cause and hopes that she will have their version of it up and running by 2011.
"My friend Darcy and I are in the works of starting our own from scratch," said Schwartz. "I don't think we will get it done in time for this year, but we have our letters and proposals out to the manufacturers. If it ends up not being across Canada, (it will be) at least across Western Canada, which will include Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C."
