Max Melvin-McNutt has an injury list that would make a rugby player blush.

“I’ve sprained right ankle four or five times, two of them really bad; left ankle a few times. Tore my meniscus in my right knee, sprained my ACL in my right knee, sprained my MCL and ACL in my left knee,” he lists off his injuries.

A broken tibia, bruised pelvis a few times over and his most recent, a torn labrum in his hip, for which he’ll need surgery. He pauses.

“Rotator cuff, concussion, broke a few bones in my hand and wrist.”

The litany of injuries has lead to the slow burn-out of his competitive snowboarding career.

“It was a lot of compiling injuries,” he says. “It’s not worth it because I’m going to need my body for the rest of my life.”

The 22-year-old Yukon native, who calls Whitehorse home has been sidelined due to injury the past three out of four seasons.

In the one winter he was able to stay healthy, he accumulated enough points to join the junior national development team, a first for a Yukon snowboarder.

His career bests were a fifth-place at nationals in slopestyle and a bronze at the Dew Tour M Series.

His retirement hasn’t been a complete surprise to those in the sport, but he now wants to take on a bigger role behind the scenes of the sport, as a coach.

“He’s been injured for a little bit so the official notice that he was retiring wasn’t a surprise,” said Snowboard Yukon head coach Mary Binsted. “We’re thrilled that he’s going to continue on and give back to the Yukon Snowboarding community.”

Melvin-McNutt started snowboarding when he was seven at the Mount Sima bunny hill.

“I just fell in love with snowboarding and I wanted to progress and learn new tricks all the time,” he says. “When you really love something you just put a lot of time into it and that’s what it was for me. I just progressed and I loved doing it.”

For Melvin-McNutt, snowboarding is a form of expression.

“It’s so much about how it looks and how you express and movement, just like dancing,” he says. “That’s something I really like about snowboarding, just the style and the fear factor, like really getting over your fears and doing something scary is really fun.”

For a long time, Melvin-McNutt wouldn’t flip on a snowboard, he was a spinning master. Then he decided to learn to flip, and the next year he learned to double flip .

“It’s like anything, once you learn how to do it, it can become second-nature to you,” he says.

He is looking forward to taking on a coaching role with Snowboarding Yukon this fall and winter.

In previous years, he was around to coach kids on the trampoline in the fall, but would travel during the snow season for competition.

“My favourite part about watching Max coach is when he was an athlete he was very independent minded athlete and he had a tendency to do things the way he saw them fit. He really likes to forge ahead and push to learn new skills,” says Binsted.

But now she says, he tells his athletes to slow down and work on the fundamentals before they push to the big, complicated manoeuvres.

“That’s why you have coaches,” she says. “They have a clearer perspective on what the pathway is.”

Melvin-McNutt is ready for the new challenge. From his experience on the international snowboard circuit, to his ability to connect with kids new to the trade, he says, “I think I’ve got a lot to give.”