It's summer so what could be better than pouring through ski information?

The executive met this May to make plans for next season (that being 09/10)

We had a great year but need to fettle the program a bit to make it better: Better coaching/athlete ratios, ability to match children by age and skill both, aiming more in the direction of the Nancy Green program.

For some brief background (for details see Alberta Alpine)

Nancy Green is a ski racing development program for ages five (5) through ten (10). It is designed to develop basic ski technique, safety rules and teamwork and introducing children to competition, all within the guidelines of the AIM 2 sports development document and Husky Snowstars skill development.

We have had younger kids in the program and we have had older kids in the program. However, the younger kids, regardless of skiing ability are too young for the team aspect and the safety aspect. They may do well in a group  of like-aged kids in a program designed but this is not that program and we are going to follow Alberta Alpine's and Alpine Canada's guidelines for the program and have the minimum age be five ( as of Dec. 31/09)

Similarly we are going to have the maximum age be ten (10) as of the 31st Dec. 09. We need to move the older children up to the appropriate level which is "Kinder" . Parents have voiced concerns that their children are " not competitive" and so want to ski with the Nancy Green groups but we do not have the coaching resources to accommodate this (In the past we have taken away two coaches to run an "over-age" group and, given the skill level of the kids involved these tend to be very experienced coaches who are much needed for the ages the program is meant for). Rather than continue this way we want to emphasize that the Kinder program is for a certain AGE not COMPETITIVE INTEREST. There is certainly more gate training and racing available but racing is not necessary by any means. It is simply that the children age 11- 14 will be skiing with their age group.

So 11 and 12 year olds are K1,

13 and 14 y.o.s are K2

over 14s can ski K2 but race as Juniors

In the past we have taken new children over age ten into the Nancy Green program to try to be accommodating. As is obvious from above we don't have the resources to do this anymore and will evaluate skiers new to the club who are over the age of ten to see if they are skiing at a level adequate for the Kinder group their age would have them in. As they would have had to register with the club we would refund the club registration fee if they were not accepted.

Over the last few seasons we have been developing the High Performance Nancy Green group.

For those who aren't certain what that is it is typically 8 -10 y.o. Nancy Green racers who are invited and are interested in training an extra session (Saturdays) with the goal of attending more races out of the city.We will be evaluating all of the skiers and inviting racers to join the H.P. group. From a practical standpoint, we would ask everyone to register and pay for the regular, two-training-day Nancy Green by age and we would add the registration cost of the extra training day afterwards.

We plan to keep the 3 or 4 day training option for the K level. The 3 day option, though is Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. Skiers can't be registered for 3 days training, miss a Thursday and decide to make it up the next week by coming Wed, Thur., Sat., Sun. The coaches cannot plan appropriately if this happens.

Registration will be on Zone 4 again this year. We will try to make their site work better for us this season.

In more summer appropriate news, the Bike Park is opened, there are rental downhill bikes and certified instructors this year so GO BIKING!!!!! It is an unrivaled hoot.

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