SLIPPERY ROCK — The sport doesn’t matter. Connor Zorn simply wants to win.

Even if it’s a sport the Slippery Rock eighth-grader has never done before.

“He’s so competitive in everything he does,” Connor’s father, Mark Zorn, said. “He’s taking advanced classes and getting straight A’s in those. He plays baseball, basketball, runs track and cross country ... He just wants to be on top.”

Add snowmobiling to that list.

Zorn took his son to see a snowmobile race at Peek n’ Peak in Clymer, N.Y., in 2014. Connor was 7 at the time.

“He watched the youth races and told me, ‘Dad, I think I can beat those kids.’ Just like that, he wanted to do it.”

Connor was not completely inexperienced with snowmobiles at the time.

“My uncle had one and I used to ride it at camp,” Connor recalled. “It was fun and you can go pretty fast.”

In 2015, Connor’s parents entered him in an East Coast series based in Massachusetts. But the travel was lengthy and events would be sporadically canceled.

Mr. Zorn described the sport as “motocross on snow, with jumps sending the snowmobiles 30 to 40 feet in the air.”

Connor competed in a national series from 2015-19, with events in Salamanca (NY), Duluth (Minn.) and Michigan.

“Connor did pretty well there,” Zorn said. “He finished among the top 15 (in points) every year, even though we didn’t do the races that were too far away.”

“I didn’t do so good at first,” Connor said, “I’d be racing against kids from Minnesota, where there was a lot more snow, and they were more experienced than I was. Once I was doing it for a while, I became more competitive.”

Then Connor was hit by two setbacks.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic shut a lot of races down for a year or two. When Connor returned to racing in 2021 — competing in the Michigan Snocross series in Mancelona, near Traverse City — he became a victim of a jump that went awry.

Trying to complete a double jump, his snowmobile careened wildly off the trap, sending him toward a box trailer parked on the side of the course. He struck the trailer at full speed.

“I could feel myself going over the handlebars, so I grabbed on and accidentally hit the accelerator as I left the track,” Connor said.

His injuries included a broken ankle, broken elbow, broken ribs, a punctured lung and lacerated liver.

“He spent that night at Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“His mother wanted him to quit that night,” Zorn recalled. “Connor was devastated by that idea. He said if he quit now, he would never race again. He loved it too much.

“We agreed to take it year-by-year at that point. He was physically cleared to return to racing six weeks later. It’s been good ever since.”

Now 14, Connor recently won the Michigan Snocross championship, tallying 388 points in the Trail Division, age 14-15. The second-place racer had 344 points. The Michigan series consisted of nine racing cards and Connor swept the competition in five of them.

Races are five laps, each lap consisting of approximately half a mile.

His younger brother, Kaleb, 11, a fifth-grader at Moraine Elementary, also does snowmobile racing and finished third in points in the 120 Outlaw Class of the Michigan Snocross series.

“We turn these trips into family time,” Zorn said. “The Michigan series raced every other weekend, from December through March. We’d leave right after school on Thursday, get practice time on Friday, race Saturday and Sunday, get home Sunday night and get the kids up for school on Monday.”

Now that the snowmobile season is over, Connor is competitive in other sports avenues. He plays catcher in baseball. He is a member of Slippery Rock’s middle school track and field team and is trying to break that school’s record in the 800 meters.

The record of 2 minutes, 18 seconds, has existed for 23 years.

“I’ve hit 2:18.2, so I’m right there,” Connor enthused. “I’m gonna get it.”

He figures he’ll continue with snowmobiling competition through his high school years.

“It’s just consistency, doing my best from race to race,“ he said of his success in the sport.”But I doubt I’ll be able t o do it while I’m in college.

“Baseball is my favorite sport. My ultimate goal? Make it to MLB ... at least to Class AA or AAA.”