Two medals, one proud dad

WOFF Steve Medaris had no idea what he was looking at the first time a snowboard went past him. Now three decades later, he’s collecting medals alongside his daughter.

In 1991, WOFF Medaris, a surfer and skater, had his first look at the snow early in his Air Force career.

“Somebody went past me on a snowboard. I’d never seen one before,” he said.

“It just looked more natural to me.”

Two years later, he was hooked.

At this year’s RAAF Alpine Snowsports Association (RASA) Championships at Mount Hotham, the RASA Patron – AIRCDRE David Houghton hung medals around two Medaris’ necks on the same night.

LACW Ashlee Medaris took third in the Intermediate Women’s Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom. Her father took second in the Advanced Men’s.

“[It was a] pretty proud moment because we both got a medal that night,” WOFF Medaris said. 

In only her second year competing at the RASA Championships and her first in the Air Force team, LACW Medaris put herself up a grade.

“I wanted to get better at racing this year, so I was pretty stoked with the medal,” she said.

Her snow career began at five, on skis, under strict paternal instruction.

“Dad wanted me to get to know how edges work, and I was never allowed to use poles.”

She swapped to a board at 14 and broke her wrist on day three.

“Dad thinks breaking your wrist is a snowboarding rite of passage,” she said. 

“I had to get back on [the] skis the next day.”

This year also marked 30 years of snowboarding at the championships, and LACW Medaris is proud of her dad’s efforts to get the category to exist at all.

WOFF Medaris began engaging the RASA committee in 1994, asking for snowboarding to be let in.

“Initially, I had no response, but I just kept writing to them,” he said.

“In December of '95 they said, ‘Yep, all right. Come along, grab some mates and, by the way, you’re in charge because you wrote the letters’.

“I’d never seen or been in a race and there I was writing the rules.”

He brought old jumpers and shirts from previous RASA championships back to Hotham this year. His daughter’s favourite is the 2006 shirt, the year she was born.

“I just happened to be wearing one of his ADF jumpers the moment I got awarded the medal,” she said.

“It was a full-circle moment.”

On the mountain, her father has a broader parenting portfolio.

“All the RASA boarders talk to him like, ‘Yes, Dad, no, Dad,’ and I’m like, I’ve got so many siblings this week,” she said.

“I’m blessed to be able to run up to Dad in the race office and tell him I’ve learned a new trick.

“It’s really cool being able to have my dad there at RASA with me.”

LACW Medaris works in logistics at 2OCU, on her father’s base. After 37 years in uniform, WOFF Medaris said that has changed things at home.

“For years I’ve been disappearing to this thing and everyone at home is going, ‘What’s he doing?’” he said.

“Now there’s someone at the kitchen table who gets it.”

He said this year’s championships were far more than a snow trip. Half of the field were first-timers, tipped into freezing weather and a room full of strangers.

“It’s a bit like going on a deployment. You don’t know anyone, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

“If someone’s had a stack or they’re having a rough day, the team is there to keep you going. There are many parallels with military life.

“And on another note, I hope other Air Force families get the opportunity to compete in Defence sport with their son or daughter – it is priceless.”