Success is a funny concept as it is defined by ones own actions and achievements. Success to Joe Prebich, was to just be happy doing what he loved, no matter where it brought him in life. He loves to write, and he loves to snowboard, and he decided at the age of fifteen that snowboarding and writing is what he’d be doing for the rest of his life.

Joe Prebich was just another kid who attended Virginia High School. He played for the Blue Devil’s hockey and tennis team, two sports he still loves to this day. But after a few years of playing hockey, Joe got frustrated and decided to quit. Shortly after Joe quit hockey, he discovered snowboarding, and he and his dad learned to snowboard together. Joe loved snowboarding so much that he made Giants Ridge his second home. After finding this new passion called snowboarding, Joe finally found out who he was and what he would chase in life.

“I’ve never been really good at snowboarding, that’s never been my goal,” says Joe Prebich, “I realized early on that I wasn’t gonna be a professional snowboarder, but what I realized was that I needed to figure out a way to work and live and snowboard as much as possible.” Joe had to find a career that could keep him committed to snowboarding, that’s when he found out there was a career titled Snowboard Journalist. Shortly thereafter, Joe, with the help from a few friends, started a magazine about snowboarding called 218 “A Magazine for the Misguided Youth.” While still in high school, when Joe was only seventeen, he had gotten a call from Pat Bridges, the editor of Snowboarder, congratulating him on his magazine.

Ever since then, Joe Prebich pursued what he loved with the full-time support from his parents. Every winter Joe would turn his backyard into a snowboard park. “I’d build my own rails, I’d lose my dad’s tools, I’d fry our yard, and I’d wreck my truck, ya know? I’d do whatever I could to make this work,” Joe said. “I wanted to just be able to enjoy life and have a lot of fun doin’ what I wanted to do, but that didn’t necessarily mean not going to school.” Joe went to college at the University of Montana while trying to become a Snowboard Journalist. He earned a degree in Journalism while graduating with honors.

While attending school, Joe kept asking Pat Bridges for a job. “Anything he could give me where I got my name in print, I wanted it,” says Joe Prebich. “So he finally gave me a few jobs here and there throughout my college life, and then after that, I ended up getting a job with them and moving down to southern California, and through that network, I was an associate editor for “Snowboarder,” an elite snowboarding magazine. I was on the road for nine months a year just meeting new people. I'd known Shaun [White] in passing from that point, then a job came up at Red Bull and they were actually looking for someone to manage Shaun’s World at Red bull,” Joe Prebich explains. “So I put my resumé in and called them letting them know how much I wanted this job. Then I kinda got brought on, and it was literally my job to create a relationship with Shaun.”

Joe’s job at Red Bull was to maintain Shaun White’s everyday life, and help keep him in line. “You have to keep pushing yourself as an athlete,” said Shaun White on his website www.shaunwhite.com/projectx/“When you’re at the top of the sport, that means pushing yourself into unknown territory.”

Joe also helped create Project X. Project X is a project to create a custom half pipe in the backwoods of Silverton, Colorado, where there is said to be some of the best powder (snow) around. Silverton is for the expert skier and boarder, and because of this, it gets less traffic in a season than most resorts get in a weekend. In order to create Shaun White’s custom halfpipe, it took two months, and 30 helicopter-dropped-bomb avalanches to get enough loose snow to form the half pipe. It also took Snow Park Technologies 8000 pounds of steel to create the world’s first on-mountain snowboarding foam pit so Shaun could practice his tricks without injury.

After two months in the mountains, Shaun left Silverton, Colorado with five brand new, never before seen or attempted tricks. These are the tricks Shaun White would use to take gold for U.S.A. in the half pipe at the Winter Olympics. Not only did he take the gold, he STOLE the gold in his first run out of two, with a score of 46.8 passing second place by 4 points, and in his second run he exceeded past others with a score of 48.4 Shaun White surpassed everyone’s score both rounds, leaving people speechless.

Although Joe is no longer working for Red Bull, he is now the Global Marketing Director of Oakley, but he and Shaun White are still great friends and do a lot of snowboarding together.

While snowboarding, Joe and Shaun love to get out and explore new places. They are currently snowboarding in Europe, but their favorite place to snowboard is a secluded island in Japan. This secluded island is where they shot the movie “Big In Japan: Shaun White.” They love Japan because it is unlike anywhere else. There are no chair lifts, no snowmobiles, no helicopters, and the only way to get around is by snowshoe. This mountainous area in Japan is also said to have its own signature snow that is so unique in that it has its own texture and offers its own experience found only in Japan. Another reason they love Japan is because of the natural hot springs they relax in from time to time.

Even though Joe Prebich moved away from the Iron Range as soon as he graduated, he never left with intentions to forget his roots. He still loves catching up with all his old friends at least once a year. “When we get together its just like high fives and nothings ever changed, so it’s not like you ever really leave anything. The hardest part is saying goodbye, but the minute you leave it’s like ‘God I feel good.’ Just got to work through it and get through it.”

Joe is currently in France working with the Oakley team where France is hosting the 1st European X games.