For those that don’t already know them, Deven and Kiernan Fagan are identical twins on the fast track of slopestyle skiing. The pre-teen brothers from the state of Maine know how to throw down on snow with the best of ’em and hold themselves like grown adults.

This past April, the boys ventured to Copper Mountain, Colorado to take a stab at USASA National Championships. After bagging four podium positions and an extra carry on full of hardware, the youngsters have proven that they are a force to be reckoned with in the sport of freeskiing. FREESKIER contributor Peter Elliot recently sat down with the Fagan boys to get the scoop on their passion for skiing, what their futures hold and what tricks they just added to their arsenal. Get familiar, below.

Interview by Peter Elliot.

The Q&A…

So how old are you guys?

Kiernan: Twelve.

Deven: I’m older by ten minutes.

Where did you guys start skiing?

Kiernan: In our back yard. We always tried to find little jumps and stuff.

Deven: Yeah, the first mountain we skied at was King Pine, and then we went to Shawnee Peak. We started going to Sunday River this year.

You both seemed very comfortable while competing in Colorado. Do you travel frequently to ski out west?

Deven: Not really. We’ve gone to USASA Nationals for the past three years. We went to Lake Tahoe last year. We won a free trip to Woodward Tahoe. We also just got back from Project Gold Camp at Mammoth.

Kiernan: Yeah, Mammoth was really sick. We both learned dub 1080s, Bio 900s, alley-oop flat 540s and a bunch of switch corks.

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That’s quite the accomplishment. What are some of your goals for the summer?

Kiernan: To just work on unnatural [spins] on the trampoline. My goal for the end of the summer, which I will probably complete next week, is to dial in all four dub 10s. I want to get all four cork 9s on snow next year. I got three of them. I just have to work on the switch right.

Deven: We jump on the trampoline every day in the summer. We have two tramps; an Olympic style one and a round one. We use the round one, mostly. It’s the same tramp we’ve had since we were two years old. We just like it better. When we’re not able to ski, we’re on the tramp practicing. We have rails in our backyard with turf and fencing. When we get deep into the summer we’ll set something up.

Do you set competition goals?

Deven: We just go out and do the best we can.

You guys have to compete in regional East Coast events to qualify for USASA Nationals. How do you feel about the East Coast competition scene?

Kiernan: It’s fun. We pretty much just try to qualify for Nationals every year. We have fun, and then when we get to Nationals we try to do the best we can. We’ll be old enough to do Revolution Tour events in two years. I think we are moving out to Breck for the winter. Just to ski there and do as much as we can do.

Deven: Yeah, we’re going to have to do USASA Nationals again next year. This year we had a few events at Sunday River, two at Shawnee Peak. We also competed in New Hampshire a little bit.

What’s a ski week like in the winter for you guys?

Deven: We ski pretty much every day. We go to school, ski after school at Shawnee Peak. They have night skiing. If we aren’t night skiing, we get towed around in our field. On the weekends we go to bigger mountains like Sunday River.

Is it true that you don’t really have a ski coach?

Deven: We are mostly on our own, except for when we go to Abenaki for Monday night skiing and John Panakio is there. If there were no coaches at Mammoth this spring, we still would have learned doubles. We just did them on the air-bag and brought them to the jump. When we move on to Rev Tour I think we might get a coach.

Kiernan: Yeah, we just needed access to the air-bag. We know what we have to do. Maybe in a couple years we’ll get a coach. We help each other all of the time. I’m not sure if having a coach would hold us back—they might have me progress at a slower rate. On the other hand, having a coach may help a lot. It’s something that we will have to figure out.

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You guys seem to feed off of each other in all aspects of your lives. How does that work during your time on the mountain?

Deven: We just go out and ride together, and progress each other. I do a 540, and he has to do a 720 and 900. We try to constantly one-up eachother. If Kiernan does something sick, I try to do it better; one-up him.

Kiernan: I’ll do a trick, and then I’ll be like, ‘you have to do something new now.’ If Deven does something sick, I feel like I need to try to do something better.

What do you like the most about skiing?

Deven: I like competing. I get really nervous at the beginning; kind of scared. You just really want to land your run, and when you do, you’re stoked.

Kiernan: The feeling of being stoked with all your friends. Just shredding. Landing a cool new trick—that’s what gets me the most stoked, and that’s what I love the best about skiing.

Where do you guys see the sport progressing in the next few years?

Kiernan: In the 2018 Olympics, I see all four triples going down. Left triple 1620, switch triples, everything. Quadruple flips, eventually. Someone will do them in a competition.

Deven: I think people might do quads, but I don’t think it’s going to go past that. That would be like aerials. But I think that all four triple rotations, just having them super clean, that’d be cool. We might see a quadruple cork though.

Will you guys have triples in your arsenal of tricks soon?

Deven: [Laughs] Eventually…

Related: 13-year-old Nico Porteous talks long term goals, double flips and more