Table Mountain Ski and Board Club hosted a skills camp on Friday before back-to-back days of racing for the Nancy Greene Finals. Five teams from across the province with Sask Alpine were involved in the race, ages five to 14.
Head Coach of the Ski and Board Club, Shaun Jamieson, says the race competition was their second of the season.
“With all the other teams in the province, we try to get together twice a year,” Jamieson said, “We did the Mission Ridge race in January down in Regina and we are doing a finals for everyone here [this past weekend].”
Children 12 and under who participated in Friday’s affair at the skills camp learned from different coaches, all while gathering different perspectives on their current training and refining their skills. The camp was part of their “Learn to ski, learn to race program.”
“We drilled the kids with edging, and rotational timing,” Head Coach of Table Mountain Ski and Board Club Shaun Jamieson said of Friday’s camp, “To basically get their techniques down to where they are skiing properly so we can move them forward as they get a little older and stronger. It’s what we’ve been doing all year, and the skills camp is to get them more race oriented.”
The club had weekend training every week during their season, eventually getting the skiers ready for the race competition that took place Mar. 5 and 6.
Saturday was a single slalom, timed event. Each participant ran an individual race (two runs) with an electronic timer, while the three lowest times captured gold, silver and bronze. There was five divisions separated by age. Sunday Jamieson says was a little more fun. The participants ran a giant slalom that ran into a slalom course. This gave the racers an opportunity to work with higher speeds. They also added multiple jumps to the course. It was a dual race with the skiers starting side by side. The race was set up on a win-loss points structure where the racers would gain two points for a win and one for a loss. The team with the most points at the end of the day would indicate the winner.
There was over 100 kids participating in the races, while 42 of them worked with the coaches during the skills camp.
The program starts with children as early as three-years-old, and Jamieson says they can stay with the club all the way until they are 19 years of age.
“They are all very coachable. At a young age they are very receptive to learning … My goal is to make them come back at the end of the day, to beg their parents to bring them back and so far it has been working.”
The weekend festivities was the last event put on by the Table Mountain Ski and Board Club this season.
