July 2008 Archives

Top Instructors Converge on Mammoth for the Competition of a Lifetime

By etmarciniec on July 17, 2008 9:47 PM | No Comments

The Naming of the 2008-2012 National Teams

[Article] - The article below is the unpublished version. An editor-revised version was published in the Fall 2008 issue of 32 Degrees magazine, a publication of www.thesnowpros.org, Lakewood, CO

"To a new team and new friends," toasted a group of candidates for the AASI National Snowboard Team, some of whom ended up making the new team--and some who did not.

It was just after 8 pm, Friday, May 2, 2008. Candidates for all four disciplines of the PSIA-AASI National Teams--including alpine, snowboard, nordic, and adaptive--had been gathering since 7:00 PM on the 3rd floor of Main Lodge at Mammoth Mountain, California in anticipation of the new teams' announcement.

Continue reading Top Instructors Converge on Mammoth for the Competition of a Lifetime.

Connecting Comps with Snowboard Instruction

By etmarciniec on July 17, 2008 8:49 PM | No Comments

The Role of the Instructor in the Age of Freestyle

[Article] - The article below is the unpublished version. A much-revised version was published in the Fall 2008 issue of 32 Degrees magazine, a publication of www.thesnowpros.org, Lakewood, CO

Big air in the eyes of a spectator. Photo by Tobias Nielsen.

March 15th-16th turned out to be another weekend of variable Vermont weather as Killington Resort played host to the final stop of the 2007-08 Chevy Grand Prix following contests at Breckenridge and Tamarack earlier in the season. Featuring halfpipe and slopestyle competitions, an overall tour purse of $300,000, and a Chevy Avalanche for each of the tour winners, the Grand Prix drew riders from the USA and abroad including contenders for the 2010 Olympics. The event also made Killington history as one of the biggest snowboarding competitions the mountain has ever hosted.

A long list of instructors signed up to work as slippers, starters, security, and hospitality. A few even labored into the night setting up flood lights on the new Superpipe, an 18-foot tall, 440-foot-long beauty that everyone was dying to hit. In the process, they got to see the event through from practices and qualifiers to finals, mingling (and sometimes riding) with the competitors, and gaining an appreciation for life on the pro circuit.

Encouraged by my boss--eastern division AASI examiner and development team member John Hobbs--I spent three days traipsing around investigating what the Grand Prix has to do with snowboard instruction.

Continue reading Connecting Comps with Snowboard Instruction.
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