It was a pretty successful season last year for the B.C. Ski Team. Four (out of six) male members moved onto the National Team and, of our three girls, two went onto university, one on a ski scholarship in Alaska, one on an academic scholarship.
How do you make the provincial ski team? First thing is, you have to be from B.C., go figure! Next, you have to ski race fast. Heading into the 2014/15 ski season we have a new crop of athletes joining the three veterans remaining.
First thing we do when comprising a new team is hold a camp and invite all the prospects to come. We’re aware of pretty much all the up-and-comers in the province from seeing them at the development races. Then we have a group meeting and layout what it takes to be on this team; expectations, time commitment and a high level of dedication. If there’s anyone still in the room after that meeting, we head out on snow and hit the gym for several days of trials and tests.
After that’s done, the coaches discuss, review video, talk to the prospects previous coaches, and analyze all the data to determine a summer training group. We choose a group slightly larger than the final team to continue which will keep the competition high during the summer. Next thing we do is run the athletes through a variety of tests such as; full medical’s, functional movement screens, strength, endurance, body composition, eyesight, and with all those results in hand, we build a training program that will be best suited to each individual.
After a month or so of gym time we head out and find some snow. This year, the first camp was in Oregon at Mt. Hood Meadows. We skied 15 days in a row for about six or seven hours a day. While there we worked on breaking down each athlete’s skiing mechanics and attempted to fix little (or large) technical issues. After getting off the hill each day we do dryland training, mostly recovery work, and teach the athletes how to tune their skis and maintain their equipment.
We also work heavily on their nutrition knowledge and teach the athletes about positive food choices and also how to shop, cook and clean. Occasionally we have nutritionists and chefs join us to teach the athletes how to make healthy meals that are easy to prepare and maximize nutrition — most of the athletes on the team are very good cooks when they leave.
Next up was Whistler, where we completed a five week, intense dryland training block. Utilizing Whistler Athlete’s Centre facility from the 2010 Olympic Games, we had the athletes complete, on average, three workouts a day in the gym, as well as yoga, gymnastics, hiking, climbing, mountain biking and performance seminars.
The entire summer is about learning team work, building a work ethic, getting fit and healthy and preparing for an intense competition season. From there the athletes headed home for some much needed family time and studies.
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