April Alpine Newsletter
Above: The U16 Team was hosted by the Peightal's at Cafe Genevieve for a team dinner!
Championship Season
Congratulations to all athletes who qualified and competed at a championship or national event this March/April. We had many athletes traveling and competing at a high level this spring. We had athletes and coaches in Vail for US Nationals, Aspen for U18 Nationals, Schweitzer for U16 Regionals, Sugarloaf for U16 Nationals, Mammoth for U14 Regionals and Snowbasin for U10/U12 IMD Champs. Taryn Moe qualified and is currently competing in Whistler Canada, at the Whistler Cup! Pictured below is the USA Whistler Cup Qualifying Team at U16 Nationals in Sugarloaf, Maine!
World Cup Finals – Sun Valley
The United States does not normally host many World Cup alpine races other than Beaver Creek and Killington. Having Sun Valley host the World Cup Finals 4 hours away from Jackson was an incredible opportunity for our community and the country! The unfortunate or fortunate part was that it was during spring break. Many of our families were out of town and not able to experience it. U16 coaches Maci St. Cyr and Teagan Santin took a few athletes over to watch the slalom day! The U16 athletes were in awe, especially since they had there GS/SL qualifier on that same venue a couple months earlier and to see the difference in production, scale, amount of people, media, level of racing and so much more!
Sean Hines JHSC Race Director and Morgan Ellis U14 Coach worked race crew for a few days to experience a race of that scale from the inside! Thank you Sean and Morgan for working long days to contribute to the success of the event and future events for JHSC!
Volunteers - THANK YOU
The JHSC Race Department hosted a variety of races from club series to Elite FIS! Each race day takes the same number of volunteers whether it’s to U10 race or FIS. Volunteering for JHSC events should be seen as an exciting opportunity to be a key part of the success of the race! It is 100% true that without volunteers like yourselves in the timing room, on the headset at the start, operating a hand timing clock in the cold, making lunches for the staff, collecting bibs, slipping the course and being on the jury radio as a referee!
Commited Parents – We are in need of parents to become certified to be a referee for the start and the finish. It is a simple but very necessary job at each race! You get to be involved with the race and a closer way and the positions are always available if you have trouble signing up for volunteer shifts in time! Please reach out to Kristin Waddle – kwaddle@jhskiclub.org if you are interested or have questions!
Coaches – THANK YOU
To our truly amazing staff of coaches! We thank you tremendously for the dedication, hard work and tireless hours you devote to JHSC and the athletes every day! There are so many aspects of the job that go unseen, but the connections built with each athlete, the commitment to fostering an environment where athletes can develop and grow as not only skiers, but human beings is what we strive for! From nights at home writing mid-season evals, to the focus of setting a productive course for that training session, to spending hours registering the team on admin ski racing for the upcoming qualifier, to taking the extra time to make sure an athlete has the right mindset for the day, to safely driving to Mammoth with athletes, booking accommodations for the many away races the FIS team goes to, and so much more. Our coaches are not just ski coaches they are mentors, counselors, nutritionists, friends, travel agents, strength & conditioning coaches, communicators, technicians and more. We ask a lot of them to make the season successful for every athlete! Thank you to all of our coaches from Rockchuck to FIS and Masters! We appreciate everything you do!
Jackson Hole Downhill – JHMR
We had a great day of training runs and team events on the Friday of the JHDH weekend! Unfortunately, a storm rolled in that night and blanketed the mountain with more snow than what was safe to run a downhill event. It became apparent that a DH was not going to happen due to conditions on Saturday or Sunday. The snow was picking up and very heavy at times which made for amazing powder skiing for the folks from out of town! A few years ago, we came up with a backup plan that was for a dual gs if conditions ever got to the point where we had to condense it into one day.
Sunday we decided to go with the backup plan and run a fun dual GS on Moran face to the finish! With the snow piling up and making visibility tough it was actually a very fun event!
Thank you to everyone and have a wonderful spring!
