As any ski racing parent knows, it’s often a challenge to get your kids to the hill every morning on time and ready to go. I admit that I can be a bit of a taskmaster with my own kids on those morning when they’re dragging their feet. I will also admit that this ‘forced’ approach is a source of some irritation for my wife who believes (as I do to a lesser degree) that kids need downtime to rest and recovery from their busy weekdays filled with school and extracurricular activities.

My wife and I are also generally in agreement on not pressuring our children to do anything  beyond their school and home responsibilities. We believe in allowing them to find and follow their own passions and interests (even if they have few at this point in their lives). At the same time, I must also admit that I want our daughters to grow up to be good skiers and I want us to share the life of a skiing (and perhaps ski racing) family.

I began to ponder more deeply what I wanted our girls to get out of their skiing experience and I realized that, though I do want them to become good skiers, there were far more important things I wanted them to gain from it that they can’t readily get at our home in Mill Valley. In my musings, I came up with Five More Reasons Why Your Kids Should Ski Race.

Commitment

The ability to commit to something is fundamental to success in every aspect of life, whether sports, school, career, or relationships. Getting up and out on weekend mornings when we’re at Sugar Bowl teaches that commitment to our girls. Additionally, the commitment isn’t just theirs, but rather it’s a family commitment as well. Sarah and I have made a substantial commitment of time, money, and energy to our skiing life based on our girls’ desires to be a part of the Sugar Bowl ski team. We also bought a second home in the mountains to support our lifestyle.

We make the commitment to pay the bills, take care of our girls’ equipment and gear, and get them where they need to go, whether training or races. Their commitment involves working hard, paying attention to their coaches, being good sports, and, importantly, expressing gratitude toward everyone who makes this experience possible.

Could this lesson of commitment be taught at home? To some degree, yes. A significant commitment is necessary for participation in any sport or other achievement activity (e.g., dance, music, chess). But the level of commitment required for ski racing seems to be higher because of the costs (e.g., lodging, equipment, ski team fees, season passes), the travel (at least for families who live in a city or a suburb), and the amount of time spent on the hill.

Resilience

My daughters, like most children in our demographic, have a pretty easy life. Compared to generations past, they have few demands placed on them. Few children these days have to wake up at the crack of dawn to feed the chickens and milk the cows. Even fewer have to walk to and from school 10 miles uphill (in both directions!) in a snowstorm. And Mill Valley certainly doesn’t qualify as the ‘mean streets.’

Yet, resilience, that is, the ability to overcome challenges, adapt to changing situations, and bounce back from setbacks, is another essential contributor to success. So, where are my girls going get that resilience that they will certainly need as they grow into adults? Well, on the mountain skiing. The adversity children experience while skiing are many and varied. There is, of course, the weather, which can range from rain to high winds to bitter cold. My daughters were so proud of themselves a few weeks ago when they came off the hill after a full day of skiing in the rain. There are the snow conditions which can vary from ice to slush to deep powder. The terrain is another challenge that young racers face that can induce doubt and fear. When you add in a training or race course, another level of adversity is presented to kids that they must overcome. Finally, races immerse them a competitive world that provides clear evidence of success and failure and few excuses to fall back on.

Skiing is the one place in their lives where they can get out of their comfort zones in so many ways and emerge from it feeling, well, tough (in the first-world, suburban sense). These experiences elevate their confidence, boost their motivation, sharpen their focus, and, ultimately, prepare them for the inevitable challenges they will face in many aspects of their lives.

Off the Streets (and the iPhones)

The way I see it, anything that keeps kids off the streets, however mean or benign they may be, is a big win for them and their parents. When I talk about the streets, I mean anything where bored children hang out because, in my view, wherever boredom goes, trouble follows. If kids are skiing, not only are they gaining wonderful physical, psychological, and social benefits, they are also not exposing themselves to peers or situations that are unhealthy.

Additionally, anything that keeps children away from their iPhones and other screens is also a big victory for everyone. The sad reality is that most children these days are hopelessly addicted to their screens and waste massive amounts of time on their iPhones, iPads, and the like. Though I see racers checking their phones far more than I would like while on the lifts or at lunch, the happy reality is that they are so busy skiing all day that they simply don’t have time to get sucked down the black hole of screen time.

You can think of both as opportunity gains (the opposite of opportunity costs), which involve time spent doing something good for kids is time not spent doing things that are bad for them. In this case, time spent doing something healthy like ski racing is time not spent eating junk food, drinking or taking drugs, getting into trouble, or just plain mind numbing and time sucking as social media, video games, and TV.

Family Time

If you are like our family, much of your time at home is not usually time spent together. Though weekends should be devoted to that thing called family time, it rarely seems to actually happen. My wife is grocery shopping and running other errands and I’m working, paying bills, or doing things around the house. My kids are either in their rooms playing or running around outside. In other words, we aren’t doing family time.

As a ski racing family, our time in the mountains is very much family time. It begins when we pack up and head for the mountains. No doubt the drive can be a grind. At the same time, we are all together in a metal box for three or more hours during which we talk, play games, and share audiobooks. Once we arrive, it continues to be family time. Though our girls are with their training groups most of the days, we are with them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plus, we often pull them out of ski team to ski as a family. And I can tell you that there is nothing that brings me more joy than skiing with Sarah, Catie, and Gracie.

Also, when we get back to our cabin near Sugar Bowl, Sarah and I don’t work or do errands. Rather, we take walks with the girls and our Aussie, Tule. We play games. We read books. Again, the kind of family time that we always envision, but rarely succeed at while home.

Ski racing is also a different family experience from other sports because it is not just a sport, but a lifestyle that every family member can participate in and enjoy. Compared to, say, soccer (with all due respect), where families often spend weekends at cheap hotels and parents spend their time sitting on the sidelines of soccer fields or waiting around for the next game, ski racing parents can actually enjoy themselves skiing on training and race (while stopping to cheer their kids on for their race runs, of course).

As I noted in a recent post, being a ski racing parent can be a real bummer sometimes. At the same time, seeing the smiles on our girls’ faces after a day of skiing or when they cross the finish line of a race definitely balances out those tough times. When you add in the opportunities for my wife and I to enjoy skiing together or with friends is another big plus. And just being in the mountains as a family away from the ‘burbs and the rat race makes ski racing a lifestyle for which we are forever grateful. When you add these benefits to the life benefits I just described, it makes being a ski racing family a very attractive proposition.