First Day

Since there was nothing but grass in central NY last weekend we loaded up about 15 ski racing athletes and 5 coaches or so and headed to Gore. I am not sure what my exact definition of "Small Mountain" is but Gore is usually not in this category. I wouldn't call Gore big but when the mountain is all open there is a lot of skiing there with a lot of variety. I defiantly like skiing at Gore. Last Saturday, Gore skied like a small mountain. There were 2 options off the top of the Gondola and one way down to the bottom. Two thirds the way down there was an area that was full of rocks and mud mixed into the snow that lasted for three turns or so. Other than that, the skiing was pretty good. There was also a short lift running and we wound up skiing there for most of the afternoon because it did not have a particularly thin section of snow.

While it was not a huge day for Gore the open skiing was packed with people. It is interesting that in the spring, there is often really good skiing and no one skiing. Most years, Labrador closes with full coverage of its trails but not enough business to justify remaining open. When the season begins, we all go skiing in pretty bad conditions and are really happy to be there.

As we all know the weather has been almost completely unwinter like so far this season. Well, that is not completely true...I bet the snowfall totals for this winter so far are pretty normal. This issue is that after every snowfall there is a bunch of days that are 50 or 60 degrees. Every area in the east is struggling to get going.

As a result of the small area of marginal skiing and the people density on the available skiing at Gore, the parents of the athletes opted to return home Saturday afternoon instead of staying over and skiing Sunday. As we drove by Labrador going home that evening, the guns were on and they were working hard on the goal of being open next weekend. We will see how bad the weather gets on Thursday as rain is predicted. My daughter and I agreed that while the skiing was not particularly good, and the trails were, kind of, dangerously crowded, we had a great day and can't wait for another trip to Gore (which may be next weekend if Labrador can't get open).

Okay, it is coming but not quite yet

I was originally schedule to be skiing at Mt Snow as I write this but I am home in Truxton. One of the first events of the season for the PSIA-E is the Snow Sports Managers Seminar. Unfortunately, there is so much warm weather in the east there were many cancellations. Four of the staff, including me, were asked to sit this one out...shoot. Instead of skiing, I am not only writing in my blog, I am putting plastic over the screens on my porch, working on Christmas gifts (I am making them this year), drinking coffee, sending emails to other ski coaches and commenting on the turns by Bode and Andrew Weibrecht that USSA put up yesterday at Birds of Prey training. Check them out, Bode calls it skiing upside down. I am also admiring my new boards, Elan Amphibios, with traditional camber on the inside and a rocker on the outside. Oh boy, not only new skis but new technology... I hope to take some athletes to Gore next weekend but this weekend looks like ice skating and yoga.

Pretty day but no snow..yet

Here it comes again

Okay, another ski season is almost upon us. I have friends out west who are already skiing on really good snow but, of course, they are not small mountain skiers! I didn't really finish my writing about last year and I did have some good stuff to share that did not get into this blog but, a new season approaches and what is behind me is no longer important. That said, I will do better this year keeping things up to date as I travel around the Northeast USA skiing at small ski areas.

I am lucky again this year; I will be skiing full time for my livelihood. For my race coaching job, I have moved down an age group and I will be coaching JIVs this year (11 and 12 year olds). This move will keep me fairly local on weekends in January and February. This is good because Monday to Thursday I will, most likely, be out of town working for the PSIA-E (Professional Ski Instructors of America, Eastern Division) giving ski education workshops and certification exams. I am also considering boosting my USSA (United States Ski and Snowboard Association) coaching credentials by attending some of their educational events for alpine race coaches. USSA has started mandating educational updates for it's member coaches. This is a good thing.

All we need now is some cold weather. There were a couple of early snows a few weeks ago but yesterday was 62 degrees and many places in the northeast set a record high for the day. Quite a few of my eastern friends have done some skiing, in VT mainly, and it has mostly been small acreages and pretty marginal but it is coming. I am sure we will have a great skiing year... I can feel it.

Jules

While this post was supposed to be about a trip to Virginia and West Virginia, I decided to write something about Julia Mancuso first. Yesterday, she won her third GS title in a row at the US National Championship. Julia is finishing a really fine season with some great skiing.

Last fall, I became a fan of Julia on facebook. She is great on facebook. She posts stuff all the time. She is a good writer and appears to be happy sharing her crazy life with all of us. She lives right in the moment.

While I have admired her for a long time, I became a huge fan of hers at the last Olympics. She showed me (and the rest of the world) that all her sacrifice and hard work to accomplish herself in skiing was, underneath it all, fun... just plain fun! What better message is there for any athlete in any sport at any level?

Over the years, I have coached some rather elite athletes and parents often wonder how far their child can go. I can never answer that question. There are US Ski Team athletes that were great when they were young and others that found their racing when they were teenagers. The best explanation I have heard about getting on the ski team, and one that parents can understand, is this: there is one child born in the United States each year that will make the US Ski Team...pretty long odds I'd say. Anyway, the point is; you don't make it to the level Julia has attained without being incredibly focused, incredibly focused, a great skier, and incredibly fit. Did I say incredibly focused? Julia has managed to be these things and remain interesting and fun. She gladly shares her interests beyond racing on skis with the whole world. She has managed to stay upbeat and find fun all winter and is happy when she skis well regardless of outcome.

Last week she posted on facebook to see if anyone was reading her travel blog (find also in my following list). It is the opposite of this blog; it is all about big mountain skiing all over the globe. I did not realize she was writing it until her post. It is a pretty fun read, check it out. Julia also writes a "Kiss My Tiara" blog on her website. I occasionally check that out too.

Congratulations Julia on a wonderful race season!

Skiing at home for mid-winter break

PSIA schedules no events for the presidents week vacation. Most ski schools are too busy to let any of their staff take time off to ski in a PSIA educational event. We run daytime training at Labrador for the race athletes. I took Wednesday off because the kids were pretty tired after the state championships.

Next week I was headed to Virginia and West Virginia for PSIA events. More on that latter. It was great to ski with the team at home and during the day. Night skiing is handy because it gets you on skis more often each week but it really gets old as the winter wears on. It is always a mad rush to get homework done before we head to the mountain. Dinner is usually a sandwich on the fly. Skiing at night always feels colder than it truly is. All that said, I have spent most of my life skiing 3 nights a week.

The pressure of states was off and we were just trying to have fun and get back to worrying mostly about fundamentally good skiing rather than preparing for the ensuing race. The 3 athletes that did not qualify for states could race in a New York race series called the Kandahar. It consists of a regional qualifier then a Kandahar championship. This race is open to 9 to 14 year olds that did not qualify for state championships but they all race by class (JV, JIV, JIII). New York Ski Racing Association (NYSSRA) uses this race to qualify athletes for the Piche Invitational at Gunstock NH. A trip to the Piche is not in my winter this year but is a well run and really fun weekend of racing. Anyway, Labrador was hosting the regional Kandahar for the center part of the state and I would be setting one of the courses. Of course we got almost 8 inches of small flake, dense noreaster snow Friday night making hill prep for the race and course maintenance a bear Saturday. It wen pretty well and again, I was happy to be home for 4 days. I would leave Sunday morning to travel to Virginia.

NYS JIII State Championships

I was back to Bristol for the New York State JIII championships February 19 - 21. Our team had qualified 6 athletes (not too bad out of 9 that were eligible). Another week where I got home Thursday night and left again Friday night. This was also another trip where my daughter was with me so I had a fun traveling companion. Bristol is an easy 2 hour drive and we have started staying in Victor, NY, up closer to Rochester. I spent Friday preparing skis. Nadine would need 4 pair, I was taking 2. After lots of sharpening and waxing, all were ready to go before she got home from school. I was hoping the weather forecast was good so I would not have to adjust the wax too much each night before the race. When I was down at Hunter, I bought some spray on high floro to "juice" the skis for the super G races (Monday and Tuesday). Most of the team were at the hotel by the time we got there. I was pretty tired so we just made plans to meet everyone in the morning so we could get to the ski area by 7:30 AM for the slalom race (it was about 30 minutes from hotel to Bristol).

Bristol has added a new event building which is fabric structure at one end of the area. This gets all the racers and their gear away from the regular skiing public and works to every one's advantage. They put ample outlets so it was crock pot city. There is only a few minutes of downtime between runs as the second run of a race starts 60 minutes after the second course is finished being set. Generally, 30 minutes is plenty of time to set a course. Having food ready for athletes, volunteers, coaches and parents makes life much easier. It is difficult to predict when the first run of a race will be finished.

Ready for Inspection

Inspecting the course

Happy racer!

Visualization

Confident racer!

Packing in 10 inches of snow for SuperG 1

Finishing inspection

Up at the start

As a team we skied really tight in the slalom. We had one good race out of the 6 athletes. I was the men's ref (racers advocate) and so had duties beyond the Lab athletes. This pulled me away from the kids and didn't help, but probably did not effect the less than great racing we did that day. There was a team captains (coaches) meeting after skiing so we sent the kids back to the hotel with the parents and Kathy (the other coach from Labrador) and I attended the meeting There were weather concerns about Monday and Tuesday.. there was snow and/or rain coming. Bad weather wreaks havoc on speed events and there were super G races scheduled for both days. Kathy and I finally left after 4:00 PM and stopped along the way at the Ski Company outlet. We had gotten a tip from a Bristol coach that there were supper G skis in shorter lengths. We bought 3 pair of super G skis; 2 Dynastar and one Volkle, all under 190 cm. The Dynastars were nice and flexible the Volkles, a little on the stiff side but we went through all they had and found the softest pair.

I turned out the kids were taken to the nearby mall and were eating at the food court. When I called my daughter she was eating lo mein. I walked across the parking to to the Fridays next door to eat with some of the parents and the other coach. The drinks began flowing like water. I am not a big drinker, I ordered a Guinness and nursed it. I have been making beer this fall and had some delicious pilsner back in hotel room and intended on having one after dinner. I was getting worried that the bill would be split so I ordered a steak like everyone else when we ordered dinner. I did not want to have to throw in $40.00 for a chicken ceasar and a beer...at least I would have a steak for my money. The steak turned out to be pretty good and to my good fortune my dinner was picked up by the parent drinking the most. This is not that uncommon as ski racing is for the generally affluent because of its costs and everyone knows professional skiing is a pretty marginal way to make a living. But as always, getting my dinner provided was greatly appreciated.

The GS (giant slalom) wasn't so good for us either. My daughter was clean but slow, the other 2 females made pretty big mistakes. The males had a worse day. One athlete took a huge crash and went off, not only on a sled but in a back board. The ski patrol takes no chances and when there is any complaint of head or back they always use a back board. After an ambulance ride to the hospital, he was deemed okay and given the green light by the ER doc to race the next day if he felt up to it... whew. Another make, crashed in the second run and the third was so rattled by the events of the day he was really slow and looked a bit scared. We would get the team together later to see if we could get them back into a more positive cycle. SuperG 1 was Monday and we would be skiing really fast. It was time to get some focus and confidence and remember how much fund skiing and ski racing is.

Ski racing is this amazing combination of situational variables. The game is between you and what is placed in the snow for you to ski around. But there is the weather, the trail the race is on the snow condition, your start position, who else is there, what the race means for the athlete, the physical condition of the athlete, their mental preparedness, equipment, blah, blah, blah... The winner is really the best skier that day...not necessarily the best skier at the race. This is probably true with most sports, it just feels from my (a coaches) perspective that this is about the hardest sport. There is nothing like ski racing!

We woke up to 10 inches of snow for SuperG 1...not good. All the athletes and coaches took 3 runs to push out the new snow and pack it in to get down to a hard surface. Two top to bottoms in a wedge on Bristols most expert trail was an amazing workout. At lest the third was a side slip... much easier. The race went a bit better for us. Our athlete that went out on the sled the day before had a pretty good run. One girl crashed but the other two had solid runs. Super G is fun but scary. The athletes lean to be patient (all movements are progressive) so there skiing gets better as they learn speed. The problem is watching 14 year olds going 60 miles per hour and one of them is your daughter. I love it but I hate it too.

SuperG 2 on Tuesday was better weather and a pretty cool course set. Turns were bigger and faster but overall times were a bit slower than SG 1. We had another fun day. Our female that crashed in SuperG 1 had a very good run and was enough to get her into the JIII Jr Olympics which is the eastern US championship.

I left the mountain headed for home thinking I would finally get to spend a couple of hours with my daughter. She was pretty disappointed in her performance and was taking it out on me. If you have ever lived with a 14 year old...you know what I mean. I had to use the let's not talk at all to each other approach and she napped for about an hour. By the time we were home, all was okay with the world again... but I missed finding small adventure for us to share on the trip home. Next time.

My JIII racing season was over but we had a lot more skiing to do.

Back on the horse at Hunter

After the Bristol Super G, I was back down to Hunter for an Advanced Movement Analysis course on Wednesday and Thursday. This is part of the PSIA-E Master Teacher Accreditation and specifically part of the race series. This was not only my first trip to a big mountain since I hurt my knee but it was also back to the place where I got hurt. This was also the first event where I would be skiing pretty hard. By hard I mean steeps and bumps. This course adds situation (tactics) to technique to help instructors understand and identify appropriate movement patterns in and for different situations. Things like speed, radius, pitch and snow condition change tactical approach (movements) in skiing. Ski instructors are always taking ski lessons. There is always a training program if you are employed as a ski instructor. When you ask a ski instructor what they are working on they almost always answer with a body part; "I am working on my ankles", "I am working on my hands", "I am working on my hips" and so forth. When you ask a client what they are working on they often want situational improvement like; "I want to ski black diamond runs", "I want to ski in the bumps", "I want to improve my NASTAR handicap." Hence, the reason for this event, to help instructors understand how tactics work with technique so we can better help our customers improve their skiing.

It turned out my group contained some skiers that were not too advanced in tactics and/or technique. Interestingly, none came with a process to do basic movement analysis. We spent all Wednesday working on getting a consistent approach to quickly understand the movements we see when watching someone ski. I presented 3 different approaches as suggestions for process to look at skiing. The PSIA uses a skills based approach for describing the movements in skiing as the core of the American Teaching System (ATS); balance movements, rotary movements, edging movements and pressure management movements. All movements in skiing can be described in terms of these skills. It made sense to start with a skills based approach to watching skiing.

Many newer ski instructors use the skills approach to teaching. They teach edging for instance. What they miss is that the ATS skiing model uses skills to describe skiing movements so that there is common language to describe skiing. We need to teach skiing...as in ski turns and how we move to allow the ski to turn. Using skills with this group did not go so well. People kept talking about body parts instead of balance movements, rotary movements, edging movements and pressure management movements and how these were effecting the performance of the skis. So, I moved on to the approach I basically use. I look at general balance, turn entry (how the edges used are changed like step, jump, push or move to a the new set of edges to go the other way) and turn shape (the result after the turn entry). The group started getting the idea. For each skiing activity, I would use the process to describe the movements of the others in the group for all to hear. I then moved on to let them do the describing. At this point, there was no prescription just describing what we were seeing.

The third process I presented was shown to me by my friend Becky. What she does is look at gross movements to get a general idea of how the skier is moving. Then she looks at the ski in the snow and how it goes around the corner, when the spray comes off the ski and from what part of the ski (under foot or off the tail for example) and then she moves up the body to better understand how the skier is moving from turn to turn (like hips and ankles). The group had an easy time seeing gross movements and snow spray but a little more difficulty seeing ski performance and movement of mass to the new turn. By the end of the day, it did seem like most of the group were sort of using Becky's approach. I say sort of because no one was getting past the ski spray in the process.

Wednesday dinner was at Last Chance Cheese in Tannersville with my friends Mermer and Art. All we all have in common is skiing so how skis go left and right took up most of the conversation. Mermer is a writer and gardener so, for me, it was great to talk about some summer things too. I had quiche for dinner in celebration of being in a cheese restaurant but the menu had lots of good things to eat and is a favorite of many people that ski at Hunter.

Thursday I added the situation part to the on hill program. We skied short radius on steeps, medium radius on blue, and some bumps. In these situations, we explored different tactics to accomplish some reasonably effective skiing. In the bumps, I wound up teaching a lesson to the group because there was very little tactical understanding of bump skiing. It was really fun, the sun was out, it was warm and the bumps were really good. The group had a great time.

Also on Thursday, there were some college athletes training for some sectional races. After a quick conversations with a couple of the coaches, the group went down the race trail to watch some training. I spend some time explaining slalom tactics and having the group practice by describing what they were seeing. We added line (turning tactics for the gates), pole usage and shoulders (level at the fall line and parallel to the hill from fall line to transition) to what we were looking at. Later in the day, the course was reset to giant slalom (GS) so we came back and did the same thing looking at GS. I can watch race training for hours but we only spent 15 minutes on each look so we could keep skiing.

All in all, it was a really good trip for me. I skied hard and my knee did well. I never went down the back of the mountain due to the skiing skills of some of the group. This was a bit disappointing but I came home a happy camper. I did find out after the event that I had a small fracture due to the hypertension fall I took earlier in the season. It was only visible on the MRI (not the x-ray) and it is deemed healed at this point.