ACHO DENE KOE/FORT LIARD - A week ago James Duntra had never been on a snowboard.

Now the 12-year-old Fort Liard resident can stop, turn and take jumps all with his feet strapped to a snowboard. Duntra was one of 23 participants in the first annual Fort Liard Snowboard Clinic held from March 4 to 6.

Dillon Lomen of Fort Liard makes a jump during the first annual Fort Liard Snowboard Clinic. - photo courtesy of Kent Bratton

"It's pretty fun once you get the hang of it," said Duntra.

Although he spent a lot of his time on Saturday picking himself up after falling on Hay Lake Hill, Duntra is enthusiastic about the sport.

"It was really fun to do," he said.

The Hamlet of Fort Liard's recreation department organized the clinic led by Brendan Matthews and Caitlin Morris from the NWT Boardsport Association. There has been an interest in snowboarding in Fort Liard for awhile, which has only grown since the Olympics, said Roslyn Gardner Firth, the hamlet's manager of wellness and recreation.

One of the sport's benefits is it seems to engage the youth in the 13 to 17-year-old age group who can otherwise be hard to engage, she said. In addition to introducing the sport Gardner Firth designed the clinic as a stepping stone towards preparing a team to compete in the snowboarding trials for the 2012 Arctic Winter Games.

The territory's Regional, Youth Sport Events Program (RYSE) funded the workshop. Gardner Firth used funding from RYSE and the NWT Youth Corps Program to purchase 18 sets of snowboards, boots, bindings and helmets to outfit the team and the clinic participants.

"It went extremely well," she said about the event.

All of the participants, which included youth ages 11 and up from Fort Liard, Wrigley and Fort Simpson, came to the sessions on time and put in their best efforts on the hill, said Gardner Firth.

There was a wide range of skill levels at the clinic but 75 per cent of the youths had never been on a snowboard before, said Matthews, who's the head coach of the NWT snowboard team.

On Friday night, students learned how to set up the equipment, wax and tune the boards and safety considerations. They spent the next two days on Hay Lake Hill in individual and group lessons.

"By the end of the weekend pretty much everyone was making turns and stopping effectively," Matthews said.

Although there were some pretty good crashes there was also a spirit among the participants that it didn't matter how many times they fell down, they would get back up until they got it, he said. The high energy level kept the youths headed back up the hill after they snowboarded down.

Stan Bertrand, 15, was one of the participants with some experience in the sport.

Bertrand has been snowboarding on his own for the past three years. Bertrand said he got some new tips during the clinic including how to turn and how to land a jump.

"It was pretty awesome," he said.

Bertrand said he was glad to have a snowboarding event held in his home community and plans to snowboard on the hill even more now.

Many of the clinic's participants will be going on a trip that the Hamlet of Fort Liard's recreation department has organized to Powder King, a ski resort in northern British Columbia, where they will test their new skills on March 16.

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