For you to become the best ski racer you can be, you have to be darned serious about your ski racing. You must be motivated, intense, focused, and give your best effort every time you click into your skis. You have to put in the time in the gym, watch a lot of video, keep [...]
In 2011, when my daughters were five and three, we joined the Sugar Bowl Ski Team. At that time, I wrote an article titled, “Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be…Ski Racers.” In the article, as our family was just entering the ski racing world, I expressed considerable ambivalence about whether I wanted [...]
For every serious ski racer who has aspirations to ski in college or get named to a national team, a PG, or gap, year is almost an inevitable these days. PG years have been around for decades; they were common even back in my day when I took two PG years between graduating from Burke [...]
When most people in our ski racing community think of sport psychology, they think of mental training, that is, helping racers prepare mentally to ski their fastest when it matters most. Mental muscles that help racers strengthen include motivation, confidence, intensity, and focus. And mental tools I help racers to put in their mental toolboxes [...]
I’ve been involved in U.S. ski racing for—Yikes!—more than 50 years. I started as a “Chipmunk” at Mad River Glen, then moved on to the Valley Junior Racing Club (at then Glen Ellen, pre-GMVS), Burke Mountain Academy, Middlebury College, the University of Colorado, and even two seasons on the old pro tour. Since then, I’ve [...]
Who would’ve thunk it, ski racing a team sport! I always thought it was an individual sport and, on occasion, an individual sport crammed into a team sport’s body (e.g., college skiing). It certainly doesn’t fit into the usual mold of a team sport. Think about what defines a team sport. It involves a group [...]
My last post, Ski Racing Parents, We Have a Problem, clearly touched a nerve in our parent community with more than 12,000 views on Facebook alone, generating dozens of comments and my receiving many emails and messages in respond. The responses were 99.9% supportive of my perspective (one fellow spoke out quite vociferously against it). [...]
Like I said, ski racing parents, we have a problem. Want to know the problem? Well, look in the mirror. I don’t mean to insult you by indicting you as being the problem as an individual parent. I don’t know you or how you are with your children in their ski racing lives. I’m talking [...]
I was talking recently with Darcy Norman, the new Director of Athlete Performance at Sugar Bowl Ski Team & Academy about what it takes to be the ski racer you can be. Darcy has been involved high-level sports for his entire life including as a ski racer and ski coach back in the day. Most [...]
Winter's coming. You can feel it and smell it in the air. I’m not talking about the crispness of a cold and clear winter morning. I’m the talking about the feel of files digging into edges, scrapers scraping bases, and the smell of hot wax dripping onto skis. Yep, for parents of young ski racers [...]
