Ski

yes

It's official. Sunday 3/20 at 5pm...lifts stop for the year.

People look at you funny when you tell them you are a skier and hate snow, except what falls in your backyard.

I don't have to hike for turns just yet! ****** The Hideout Ski Hill will stay open through March (weather permitting). Please check Extra for additional information. Special hours for Easter/Spring Break - March 24, 25, 26 10am-5pm March 28, 29, 30, 31 10am-5pm ******

Ha, it was great today. The chunky balls on the left side were looked lethal, but were soft. It should be like that every day.

Lurker, that's exactly what I felt like the first few times. It was like being a newbie skier again, but with no way to stop them. Think how hard it would be to ever learn to snow ski if you weren't able to snow plow, skid, or do a hockey stop...

You tell her mom.

'Dude, I can't wait for the day when she starts beating me. And the Foys were both serious about her being welcome to race ASRA next season. It would be kind of cool if she can navigate a J3 level course like the one at MC or Blue. Anyway, the 200 mile RT is way too much on a school night for BC...for Belleayre, I'd consider it, but... So I have to wait to hear if I have a game to cover and if my sitter is available. ***** NASTAR is over for the season at Montage. They end it at the same time as the corporate racing. The Bode tour? Yeah, I saw him say that. I think it was more of a threat to some sponsors and an invitation to others. Remember the "Rent Me" space on his helmet, before Barilla? He's had trouble with sponsors and has been much more savy than former US "stars" like Billy Johnson and the Mahres. Johnson held up his gold and said "This is worth a million dollars in sponsorship." He ended up living in his mom's basement. I just don't get what Bode would do. US Pro Tour style events that criss-cross Europe? Uh, sort of like the current World Cup tour? The World Cup isn't a big money maker. The women lost venues last season and had to race at a couple of lower profile resorts. TV rating in Europe are down, as well.

I don't think I'll know until the last minute. I have to get baby-duty coverage.

We have channels? In any case, it's great to see a mountain making an effort. I think CB's biggest push this year was to sell "fabulous keepsake" broken lift seats. BTW, one of the prizes for last Saturday's NASTAR at Montage was a pair of Atomic GS: 11.21's in 150...17m, though. Nice little ski.

Did you do this: "A Special NASTAR race has been added on Sunday, March 20th from 1pm to 3pm on Polar Bear!!!"

Good news for Montana high schools kids with no plans to play college sports.

And people only think bowling and flat beer when they hear the word Scranton...glad to hear you had a good time.

Hmmmm...I think Carter was just sworn in about the first time I had my ticket revoked by ski patrol at CB. To be honest, I just don't really remember much about how late they were open, or when they reopened. My early years at CB were a mixture of Pink Floyd, pot, caffeine pills, and girls in tight ski pants. I was at Mount Tom and Mt. Snow through most of the 80's. That was a mixture of Front 242, vodka, aspirin, and girls in tight ski pants.

Me? Who am I, Yoda? And, anyway, I'm not really clear about what happened yesterday unless I wrote it down.

It doesn't matter what sport a kid is sponsored for. In most states, if a kid takes sponsorship in the form of money or gear, the kid loses interscholastic eligibility. It could be water polo in a YMCA league...if Speedo gives him a batch of free swimsuits and expects him to wear them in competition, then he loses his ability to play high school football in most states. Ski Mag just did a story on Jeremy Bloom. Bloom is a World Cup mogul skier that also made the Colorado football team. He unsuccessfuly sued the NCAA to be able to keep his ski sponsors. Bloom took money and gear in order to train, while living in his parents basement. Most high school interscholastic sports associations mirror the NCAA rules. For a kid attending Holderness School, it's no big deal...they are there to race and don't need to worry about losing high school eligibility; at most, they play intermural soccer in the few weeks of non-ski racing time.

A top 10 in GS or SL at JO's and he's just now in the low 100's? How is that mathematically possible? He sure didn't stumble into JO's if he ended up in the top 10, so he had to have good points going in. The top 20 racers at JO's scored under 100 for those races. DH and SG are a whole different subject, since there are 200 tech events for every DH in the US. A note about sponsorship: high school athletes in many states lose interscholastic eligibilty for accepting sponsorship and face being banned from regular school competition.

Man, the lot was hoppin' today and the green circles were filled. If crowds would only keep showing up, they'd be forced to stay open... People really took advantage of the $15 tickets.

Exactly.

You pick which USSA local club your kid joins by geography more than anything, especially with J4/5's. Not much difference in coaching. If BB is close to you, then the J4/5 program there is fine. But limited terrain makes it hard for J3 and above training. Elk, CB, and Blue all have good programs. If you were close to Montage, then the program is great from J5 through J1. Their only problem is participation. Shawnee recently lost their head coach (to Montage), so I imagine they will continue to struggle. Which club is best? It's academy racers that are the best. Not local programs. Go to http://www.skiracing.com and click the link for acadamies and camps. The Canadian Ski program sucked over the last five years. They just fired all the senior coaches. They now have a good DHer and some decent kids coming up. When you have a kid in Pennsylvania, you have two directions to take. Assuming they are good, they can be a big fish in a little pond and do really well in PARA (Pennsylvania Alpine Racing Association), but struggle up north; or, they can take a shot at the big time and perhaps be a very little fish in the big pond, which is New England. The future of a kid that stays in PARA through their junior race career will go on to college and race for a second or third tier competition program. That's NOT a bad thing. They will race among other kids that love to compete and are also getting an education. UPenn, Penn State, Princeton, are among these. They also may decide to ski in NCAA competition, rather than USCSA, which are the two separate governing bodies of college ski racing. They'll get to race as a team, scoring team points. That's great for some kids, who have only competed as an individual. One kid from each sex and from each birth year are invited to a development camp each year. Not the Ski Team, just a tryout camp. That's two kids a year, on average, from the thousands enrolled in amazing programs like the Holderness School and Waterville Valley Academy. Can a PA kid make it to "The Show"? Not directly. Currently, there is a very talented ex-CB racer who spends her winter high school semesters at WVA. She races in 40 or more extremely competitive races each season, including Eastern FIS. It's not a cheap process, either. Tuition last year for my daughter (who ultimitely decided to pursue track and is, as a matter of fact, running at the Nike Indoor Nations this Sunday, then the Penn Relays next weekend---GO KAT!!!) was $34,000 to attend an academy at Sunday River. PA kids also spend two to eight weeks every summer skiing at Mt. Hood. And it isn't the talent pool in PA. Great ski racers are made, not born. Academy kids ski seven days a week, before classes. The talented ones travel nine hours by van and miss so much school that at least one traveling coach is more of a tutor than coach. Boys have it much worse than girls, simply by numbers. There are the same number of World Cup start bibs, but about 2.5 boys for every girl that races. The annual Nations Cup winner is Austria because they are the most ruthless. Kids are plucked from local teams at the age of 11 or 12. They are enrolled in the National Academy and given the highest level of training possible. As soon as they show a weakness, they are "dismissed". Kicked out of school and sent home. Only the best stay in that environment. Hermann Maier was kicked out of the academy due to an ilness when he was a teen, btw. He had to strike off on his own and prove he deserved a spot on the Austrian Team. He was one of only a few that have ever made it that way. So if you ask me which local club will be best for your kids, I suggest you pick one that they'll be among friends and is easy to get to. It's all about fun. When I knew Jamie, I remember a kid that was always having fun. I think that a big part of her success has been due to her supportive parents that never seemed to push her, yet let her change programs mid-stream. Jamie went from an unbeatable J4/5, to a struggling J3 and-- at one point-- just couldn't seem to find the finish line. But she never gave up and kept having fun and ended up having a season a lot of kids only dream about. I left this as a REPLY, rather than making it a PM, in case anyone else might be interested.

That comes from one of the shuttle drivers. They had planned on closing THIS Sunday, but the snow/cold this week got us two extra weeks. How 'bout a big, motherf***ing BLIZZARD on 3/19? Might get us two more weeks...

Basically, the race penalty is calculated by the points held by the best five that finish in the top 10. Then each discipline (DH, SG, GS, SL) have an additional set penalty added in. As Jamie mentioned, the better the racers are in your race, the better the opportunity to lower your points. The winner of a race will get 0.00 race points, but the penalty is then added to that. Randy won in 'Dudes example and ended up with 72.84 points. The closer you are to the top racers, the lower your race points are. Race points plus penalty points equal your USSA points for a given race.

We ended up blowing off going a couple of times and were going to check it out mid-week this month, but they're only open Fri/Sat/Sun through March. I guess we missed the $2.99 Tuesday nights...

'Dude, there must be something wrong with the USSA stats computer. How does some hack J2 from PA cut points in the first year to 133? We gotta figure out a way to get you to WVA...