People in the United States generally focus on major sports such as baseball, soccer, football, lacrosse, etc., but often forget about some of the more entertaining and exciting ones. A couple of examples of these sports that are ignored despite the great entertainment they create are motocross and snocross. This article will focus on snocross and talk about what it is and what you need to participate in it.
According to the ISOC which is the professional snocross organization, “Snocross is the most exciting, fan-friendly form of snowmobile racing. It combines the big-air jumps and exciting action of motocross with the crisp winter environment, providing snowbelt race fans with race action, world-class athletes to cheer, and fun, family venues to visit. The action happens during a time of year and in geographic locations where it’s the premier race event of the season, on challenging, professionally designed, and graded tracks.” The ACS – AMSOIL Championship Snocross is the national series within ISOC Racing. The series brings together the best professional and amateur athletes in the sport and provides the best, most technically challenging tracks in the world. These races combine to create the biggest, best snocross racing show in the world, and bring great entertainment to their fans. But snocross is not only professional; all ages can participate in this sport if they are interested. Someone from our school participates in this sport where he travels to many different places across the country to race.
Although this sport is very fun and very entertaining, it is also incredibly dangerous. Riding a snowmobile in general on trails is already very dangerous due to its size and power, never mind when you put multiple on the same track where they are all hitting jumps and competing to finish first. Because of how dangerous this sport is, it creates a need for the best equipment to keep you safe. Equipment for motocross and snocross can be really expensive. The equipment you need for these sports is gear (long sleeve shirt and pants made for these sports), helmet, boots, chest protector, neck brace, gloves, goggles, and knee pads. When being equipped with the best equipment can make the sport quite expensive, where some of the more important equipment like helmets and boots can cost 500-1000 dollars for the best equipment. I’ve even seen some really good pairs of knee pads being in that range also because protecting your knees is one of the most important things to do as hurting them can cause lifelong injuries. A good set of gear will probably cost from 200-400 dollars. Some of the cheaper gear like neck braces, chest protectors, gloves, and goggles can be bought from under 100 dollars to about 300 dollars. But buying the more expensive gear will provide you more protection which is what you will want when competing in a sport like this. And on top of all of the gear, buying a newer sled it could cost you anywhere from 5,000-15,000 dollars.