Grace Warner Is Street Snowboarding’s Rising Star—And Sponsors Are Taking Note

As the 2022-23 snowboard contest season gets underway, halfpipe and slopestyle riders from around the world will descend upon some of the sport’s most iconic locations, such as Laax, Switzerland; Aspen, Colorado; and Mammoth Lakes, California—which house the elusive regulation slopestyle courses and 22-foot halfpipes on which they compete.

But in the midst of all of that, from when the first snow falls in October to the last slushy puddles of April, street snowboarders—many of whom are based in the Midwest, with its lack of elevation and abundance of accessible cities like Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago, and Detroit—are out every day, filming video parts and honing their skills on ramps, rails, stairs and anything else they can ride.

The Midwest has produced numerous pro snowboarders, from veterans like Danny Davis, Chad Otterstrom and Joe Sexton to young guns like Benny Milam. Joining their ranks, 22-year-old Grace Warner is quickly making a name for herself in the sport.

Warner first strapped in at age four and grew up riding at Alpine Valley, 10 minutes from her childhood home in Commerce, Michigan. She and her siblings Kyle (25), Drake (18), and Ana (16) played team sports in school—soccer and volleyball for Warner—but in the winter, their parents (Chad, an electrician, and Shannon, a deputy clerk for the village of Milford) would drop them off at Alpine Valley after school.

The terrain park Warner grew up riding has only expanded, with the resort building more and bigger features over the years. It was there she cut her teeth on rails and boxes and developed the confidence to go out and hit those same features in the streets.

With her effortless style (you’ll usually find her clad in a hoodie and beanie) and laid-back demeanor, Warner looks at home in the streets that raised her—but even she’s not immune to the lure of powder out West. “I’ve ridden a couple inches of powder before, and I think I would become extremely obsessed,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think I would be a street snowboarder, to be completely honest. I think I would find my obsession in that world.”

However, unlike many Midwest or East Coast snowboarders who have uprooted themselves to Salt Lake City, Breckenridge, or Tahoe, Warner is, for now, planted in the Midwest—that is, when she’s not traveling for rail jams, which tend to be more popular in Europe than they are in the U.S., though that is changing.

“With my circumstances, [street snowboarding] feels so right for me right now,” Warner said.

There are a lot of things those who didn’t grow up riding Midwest hills—many of which are literally built on decommissioned landfills—don’t realize, Warner says. “When we’re all riding the same 100-foot slope, growing up in that environment forces you to make so many relationships with people. You grow up around these people and grow your snowboarding together.”

Midwestern snowboarders often also become proficient faster due to the number of laps they can get in on a tow rope compared to each run out West being punctuated by a 10-minute chairlift ride. And then, of course, after lapping the same 100 vertical feet 40 times, the terrain park starts to offer a new challenge—and park prowess soon follows.

All those park reps growing up have begun to pay off in a major way for Warner. She joined the Burton Snowboards team this past March and signed on with Red Bull at the end of September. She traveled to Europe for the first time to film her part for the all-women street shredfest Hot Coco, which premiered on Red Bull TV this month.

“It was my first time hitting a street spot with another girl; the whole experience was super new to me and honestly it was so incredible,” Warner said. “I couldn’t have imagined it going any better; I’m so honored to be part of this video.”

Not long after she joined Red Bull, Warner received her first branded gear—but not her helmet, that tangible symbol of success for a pro snowboarder landing their first sponsors. Her team told her her helmet would take six weeks to be painted, so she was shocked to receive it (from fellow Red Bull and Burton team rider and good friend Zeb Powell) in a surprise ceremony at the Jessie’s Indoor Tour event in Amsterdam.

In the past year, Warner’s career (and life) has hit the fast-forward button—and while she’s exhilarated to be taking the ride, she’s a little overwhelmed, too. Attribute that to her Midwest humility, which is at the core of everything she does.

“I’m so honored to be working with Red Bull and so excited to see some of my ideas come to life,” Warner said. “They explore what you want to take out of [the partnership]; you can pave your own path with them.”

I met Warner at Red Bull’s Benny’s Basecamp event, in which the brand rented a house on the Wisconsin–Minnesota border (close to Milam’s hometown of Chisago City) to serve as a basecamp for industry folks and riders from Milam’s crew to do some riding.

Milam was able to handpick the attendees and show off his own special brand of street snowboarding, which in this case included trucking in snow from the local ice rink and setting up rail and pipe features in the house’s backyard because Mother Nature wasn’t cooperative.

And that kind of grassroots, athlete-focused event is exactly what Warner means when she says that her new sponsor allows its athletes to pave their own path.

The brand’s support of street snowboarding in particular is second to none. MTN DEW’sDEW
Dew Tour features a streetstyle jam session as part of its annual competition (at which Warner took second place in 2021). But Red Bull’s action sports events calendar features multiple rail jam–style events.

This winter, the brand launched its inaugural Red Bull Rail Yard event in Innsbruck, Austria, and held a second iteration December 10–11 at Appalachian Ski Mtn, North Carolina. At the latter, Warner came in second.

In a few weeks’ time, Warner will have the chance to put her own stamp on another Red Bull event, Heavy Metal, a street snowboarding contest that had been on hiatus since 2003 but returned in January 2022. That iteration of the event was held in Duluth, Minnesota, with Milam serving as its ambassador; in February, the event will move to Detroit, passing the torch to Warner.

“I think it’s important to know that street snowboarding works pretty different than contest riding; we’re all kind of in our crews doing our own thing, while the contest riders are all in one place at one time,” Warner said. “So events like Heavy Metal are so important because it brings all of us together—we can ride together and vibe together and experience snowboarding together, which is very rare for this community in particular.”

Warner is excited not only to show off her particular brand of Midwest snowboarding, with its heavy emphasis on street staples like rails and stairs and its ability to turn any artifact of urban life into a feature, but her native Detroit area, as well. A true Michigander, she loves Detroit-style pizza and the baseball Tigers.

“The scene in Detroit and in Michigan is at an all-time high right now, which is so sick to see, and it’s only going up from here,” Warner said. “I’m so excited to bring this event there and stoke everybody up and get more people in the Midwest into snowboarding.”