Cheever is Saugus’ chairman of the snowboard

Jonathan Cheever of Saugus sounds pretty nonchalant about traveling – and accelerating – downhill on a snowboard.”Most courses, the average (speed) is 40 miles per hour,” Cheever said. “It also depends on snow conditions.” He said that the top speed on some courses can hit a breakneck pace, while “others are a little slower.” And, he added, “I never thought speed was scary.”That’s good, because the 23-year-old Malden Catholic High School graduate (’03) and former class president has gone from hanging out at the Kowloon Restaurant to participating in the extreme-sports oriented Winter X Games – including this year’s, which took place in Aspen, Colorado, in January. Cheever’s event is called snowboard cross (Snowboard X), in which a group of four to six participants competes on courses featuring bank turns, rollers, and jumps of up to 90 feet. Cheever competed in the Snowboarder X Men’s Final and finished sixth.”I can’t complain too much,” Cheever said. “Right now, things are going good.”Are they ever. On Feb. 13, Cheever enjoyed a career-best fifth-place finish in another snowboard cross event – the World Cup – at the Olympic course in Cypress Mountain, British Columbia. For Cheever, the momentum keeps increasing.An interest accelerates”I guess I was always an athlete growing up,” said Cheever, whose parents, Mark and Doreen, encouraged him in this regard. Young Cheever participated in karate, baseball, basketball and football. When he was nine years old, he skied for the first time. Two years after that, he received free snowboard lessons and grew to love the activity (“Basically, it’s just sideways on plastic on ice,” he described it). He called himself a weekend warrior, traveling to New Hampshire and Maine 20 to 30 times a year ? and even more times once he grew older and got his driver’s license.After one year of college at UMass-Lowell, Cheever left – “Not enough snowboarding,” he said – and moved across the country, to Utah. In his first winter there, which coincided with the 2004-05 season, the US snowboard team approached him and invited him to join.The winter of 2005-06 was Cheever’s first competing with the team, which covers two separate disciplines – halfpipe and PGS. Part of the team also travels the globe, representing the US World Cup squad. In the Sept. 13, 2008, World Cup in Chapelco, Argentina, Cheever finished sixth in snowboard cross. On Jan. 11, he placed 13th in another World Cup, in Bad Gastein, Austria.Snowboard cross has become an Olympic discipline with the inclusion of the event at the 2006 Games in Torino, Italy. Cheever calls qualifying for the 2010 Games in Vancouver his “immediate goal.”And there are the X Games, too. The X Games tour selects the top 24 snowboard athletes from around the world. This year, they went to Aspen.But what happens in the offseason?Other options”I get to travel around the world and snowboard,” Cheever said. “Once the snow stops, I’m working with my old man in Saugus.”Mark and Jonathan Cheever are both plumbers. Jonathan Cheever got a plumber’s license from the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School in Wakefield after attending the school from 2002-04.”It was great,” said Cheever, who is licensed in both Massachusetts and Utah. “It worked out perfectly. I’d go to college during the day, and at night school I’d get my plumber’s license. You always need a backup plan. My dad’s a plumber, and I like working with my hands.”The snowboarding schedule sounds demanding, as the US team competes on the road all winter. Cheever got to go home for a few days before the Visa US Snowboarding Cup this weekend in Sunday River, Maine. He seemed to look forward to stopping by Saugus.”It’ll be nice to have some time off,” he said. “I’ve had no bed since 2006. I’ll hang out with family, see friends, eat in the North End, go to the Kowloon. I’ll be a typical North Shore guy once I’m home. Nothing too special.”The future’s in his sightsYogi Berra once wondered how someone could thin