Next: Get to Know Jaxon Pascal

So far, so good. I think last year was really when you had that breakout moto win, right? In this class, too?
Right, yeah. Yeah, I won the first moto in Collegeboy and that was amazing. I've never won any sort of national like that before. Kind of let it get to my head a little too much and got a little too excited and didn't get to repeat that until now.

So, walk us through, like how much have you grown as a rider from last year to this year? This year you’re in the title fight now and belong there. So, any changes to your riding, your trainer, program? How have you raised the bar?
Yeah, I would say everything but the training program has changed. I think just with the training program I have with, CINCH Cycling and Tom Danielson, there's just so much room for improvement and because of that, mentally I've grown times ten, what I was last year, you know. I had a pretty big injury where I tore my labrum back in December and I had a lot of battles with anxiety during that and because of that, I've grown into a much more mature racer man and everything in general. And that's helped me a lot with my racing. My body style is a lot different now. I'm still, I've actually grown since last year, year, unfortunately, [Laughs] but I still have a lot better technique. I'm much more suited for the bike. We've gotten the bike better from last year too, obviously, so everything's better. Just with the same people, so everybody's just getting better here in my circle and it's pretty awesome.

You’ve been on Honda for a couple of years now, right?
Yeah, this is my second year.

Pretty familiar with the bike and everything. Being a tall guy, what updates do you do in the bike? You’re 6’5” which is fairly taller than most motocross racers. What adjustments do you make to the bike?
Yeah. I've tried basically everything but what I'm really set with right now we have a new seat foam that we just made, it's pretty flat across the top. It honestly looks a lot like Adam Cianciarulo’s seat from last year. And we just put it on here before Loretta's and I'm loving this new seat foam. I had a tall seat before it was just a bit of a different shape, but that's really what we do. We just do the tall seat. I actually run stock pegs instead of anything built because with built pegs, they sit up a little bit higher. So, I have good grip with the stock pegs, and they sit just a little bit lower because the teeth are smaller. And so I'm really happy with that. I run my bars neutral. I run the champ ODI bars, which I really love, I don't even have to use risers. I was using risers last year with the McGrath bend and so I switched bends and don't have to use risers. So, I'm really comfortable with that too.

How many years have you been coming to the Ranch as a competitor? Did you ever see yourself winning races and being a podium threat every race?
No, no, I never, never thought this would be possible. Growing up, I was just like  the weekend warrior. This was never the plan, until maybe a year and a half, two years ago. Yeah, I basically made the decision when I was 15, 16 that I wanted to race dirt bikes and I wanted to give it a shot and, I'll be damned, it's working out pretty well. So, yeah, getting a gold medal at Loretta's is something I never thought I'd have in my life. But at the point I'm at now I want more of them.

And then you mentioned before we started recording you grew up playing other sports. Talk to us about switching to moto and stuff like playing different sports.
Growing up, I played all the school sports. I went to public school basically. My whole life until sophomore year of high school. I played basketball in high school a little bit. I was the C team captain, wasn't good. [Laughs] I might be tall, but I wasn't good. Yeah, after the first year I made it to Loretta's in 2016, I made it in one class, I got 32nd and I went home and quit dirt bikes and played baseball for a year! I was a AA captain so it wasn't good there either. [Laughs] But I don't know, if you race motocross, you know, there's just nothing like it. The adrenaline rush you get is genuinely addictive. It's a bit of a drug, like, honestly, and, you know, when we get injured, we have to get off the drug and it's really hard so I can't match motocross and now I know what it feels like to go race and try and win and the strategies and everything of it. There's just nothing like it and that's why I put 100 percent effort into it.

When did you hit your growth spurt? Did you have to change your riding at all through the process?
So, between eighth grade and freshman year. I think that puts me around 14 years old. I was pretty much, not the short kid in class, but definitely not tall. I think I was 5’2” to 5’4” somewhere like that. And that year I grew nine inches in nine months. So, I grew an inch every month. And yeah, I got like really lanky. If you guys saw me on supermini, you would have been like, “That kid is not normal!” [Laughs] “There's something wrong with him! He's way too tall for how skinny is.” And I broke every limb in my body that year. I broke every both arms and both legs that year just because my legs and arms were twigs and they would snap. And so, yeah, that was like really interesting, right? Because I had to build this muscle and keep the flexibility and everything very quickly if I wanted to ride their bikes and change my whole riding style, right. Because like I was short on a 125 and then all of a sudden I was the tallest kid on the gate. So, it was pretty weird. But you know, it took a couple of years but now I'm here and it's working out great. I love being 6’5”. [Laughs]

You mentioned the shoulder injury. What was that kind of process like, and I guess, you know, you got a moto win last year, you kind of ramp it up then get injured. What was that like recovering from that?
Yeah, it was pretty frustrating. It was a month before the first Supercross Futures at A2. I was on supercross training. I was making a really good mindset changes a month after Mini O’s where I had some really good results. I almost podium the pro class there and was top 10 every single moto. So, I was pretty happy with like where I was at, and it was like really hard for me to have an injury like that. The doctor said it was gonna take six months, which was scary. Luckily it took three months with a lot of hard recovery. So yeah, that was really hard, and it was a lot of anxiety during the time, and I had some pretty gnarly panic attacks from it. And yeah, I grew as a person and, you know, God used it for good and I wouldn't change it for anything else because I don't know if I'd be here winning these motos if it wasn't for it.