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PCSS Newsletter October 26, 2021

By PCSS, 10/26/21, 8:45PM MDT

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  • Are you ready for Winter?
  • Club News
  • Hosted Events & Fundraisers
  • Division Updates

Message from the Executive Director

The early snow this year has everyone in the PCSS Family stoked for the upcoming winter season! The energy of staff and athletes is palpable! 

As you sort through last year's equipment and gear, please consider donating lightly used coats to our friends at Christian Center of Park City ("CCPC"), who are ensuring as many kids as possible in our community are adequately dressed for winter. Coats can be dropped off at team practice or at CCPC during drop off hours. 

For those of you with 2 years worth of old gear in the garage, the Park City Ski Swap is happening November 5-7 at Basin Recreation! Anticipation is already building for this beloved Park City tradition. In its 49th year, the Park City Ski Swap is PCSS's biggest event and our most important fundraiser. Roughly 30 percent of our of our program expenses are supported by fundraisers such as these. We are encouraging all divisions to participate this year. Each of us can become involved in small and unique ways. Consider selling your used gear via the swap, volunteering a few hours, or purchasing gear at exceptionally low prices. To keep the event as safe as possible, we are requiring masks and pre-event registration. Details below. 

Finally, thank you to everyone at PCSS and the hard working staff at the Youth Sports Alliance for making this year's Jans Winter Welcome a huge success. PCSS membership sold a record number of opportunity drawing tickets, gathered great auction items and gave generously toward this fun and important fundraiser for youth sports in our community. 

Thank you PCSS families for all you do! Think Snow!


Club News & Upcoming Events

October - Coat Drive - Bring your lightly used jackets to practice this week and next to provide local kids warm clothes this winter. 

November 1-7 - Ski SWAP - sell gearvolunteer or purchase gear - Our Biggest and Best fundraising event of the year.

November 5th - LivePC GivePC - Support your local athletes. Every $5 or more donation gets PCSS on the leaderboard. 

November 9th - Versante - Order online or eat in person. 25 percent of sales come back to the club! 

November 9th - PCSS Annual Meeting open all PCSS athletes, families, and interested community members. This meeting will be held virtually. Register HERE! Additional details coming soon.


The best fundraiser to showcase your local roots

Ski SWAP - sell gearvolunteer or purchase gear - Our Biggest and Best fundraising event of the year.

Slade competing

Slader competing

Athlete Spotlight

Slader Rodman is a member of our FIS Elite mogul team. He is a 16-year-old Junior at the Winter Sports School. This past 2020/21 season was Slader’s return to competition after a compound fracture of his tibia and fibula, and he posted some of his best-ever results. Slader made his competitive debut in both Junior National Championships and National Championships and is looking forward to his first time competing in U.S. Selections this upcoming December. He has hopes to qualify for the 2021/22 NorAm Tour. Slader is one of our most determined athletes and completed the most repetitions on the water ramps this summer. 

Slader is extremely active. In his spare time, he loves to go river rafting with his family. At the age of eleven he got to raft down the Grand Canyon, and even flipped the raft in the biggest rapid on the river – “lava”. He loves to build Legos, and is versed in bass, ukulele, and the drums. He loves skiing more than anything in the world, but loves his family more. He is proud to have deadlifted 330 pounds 6 times this week!

 

Sarah enjoying moments with kids

Sarah enjoying moments with kids

Coach Spotlight

Sarah Taylor is entering her 4th season coaching for PCSS. She has been promoted to Head Coach overseeing all of the Big Mountain Skills Team - which builds on her years of coaching experience with the AMP Program at Park City Mountain. Sarah will directly oversee the Advance Skills Team and will lead the Local Skills Team, Kellen Montgomery and his coaching staff. 

Some of what makes Sarah special is that coaching is her passion and she is stoked to be able to share it with all the athletes she has the opportunity to ski with. Apart from coaching skiing, Sarah is also a personal trainer in Salt Lake. She has her Bachelor's of Science in Kinesiology and is currently pursuing a Master's of Science in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Cognitive and Motor Neuroscience.


Division Updates

The competitors from Park City and Steamboat crawling through the preview of the obstacle course race.

The competitors from Park City and Steamboat crawling through the preview of the obstacle course race.

Ski Jumping

While many families headed south for a last warm trip over the UEA weekend, PCSS’ Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined athletes traveled to Steamboat Springs, CO for their annual October Mini Camp. Everything from snow to sunshine made for an interesting weekend, which they certainly made the most of.  Upon arrival, a few inches of fresh wet snow blanketed the Howelsen Hill ski jumps, but the coaches and athletes made quick work of clearing the plastic in preparation for a weekend of jumping. The athletes demonstrated their strong ski skills as they glided from plastic to a snowy outrun at the end of each jump. 

The team took advantage of the abundant snow up high with a fun XC ski up on Rabbit Ears pass Friday morning. They skied in a track through the powder and pushed their ski skills with games and on-ski challenges.

On Saturday, Park City and Steamboat faced off in a fun competition, with jumping in the morning and an exciting obstacle-course Nordic Combined race in the afternoon. All of our athletes competed in the race - even those that identify only as ski jumpers. While running the loop, athletes navigated through slaloms, jumped over picnic tables, hopped through hoops, and army crawled across the jump flats. Our own Tyler Phillips (who normally doesn’t race in Nordic Combined) battled it out for the win and came in a close second overall on the HS75. 

 

PCSS athletes John Olson (Nordic), Griffin Briley (Skimo) & Ethan Romer (Skimo): the junior and overall podium from the PC Fall Trail Series #3.

PCSS athletes John Olson (Nordic), Griffin Briley (Skimo) & Ethan Romer (Skimo): the junior and overall podium from the PC Fall Trail Series #3.

Skimo

Our SkiMo athletes have been hard at work as they eagerly await the start of winter. Some of them have already snuck in some pre-season turns after the big UEA weekend snowstorm!  Off the snow, they are building their fitness running and cycling.  Many of our team members will be at the High School State Championships mountain biking this weekend in St. George, UT. Our athletes have also been racing fast at the PC Fall Trail Series. Griffin Briley wrapped at the Ski Jump Stair Challenge finale to complete his perfect record of four wins in as many races! 

Practice @ Woodward

practice at Woodward Park City

Snowboard

Our Snowboard dryland crew has been working their tails off lately putting in long hours at workouts and progressing at the speed of light on trampolines and park boards at Woodward. This hard work for the athletes is going to pay dividends in the winter. 

Some of the Nor-Am SBX athletes are preparing to head Hintertux in Austria. These athletes will be training and competing in the 2nd week of November. Meanwhile, one of our comp athletes is already in Austria with Pops for an amazing opportunity to participate in a fall freestyle training camp.

Between dryland and these trips our riders are excited to get on snow and prepped for the upcoming season. 

 

U12 and U14 Dryland sessions

U12 and U14 Dryland sessions

Alpine

What a month! Snow in October, lots of dryland, and fundraising season in full effect! It’s been great fun to see the enthusiasm build as we round the corner into the start of the winter. Spending time with our U12 / U14 groups in dryland was certainly one of the highlights of my time this month. Getting to see their energy and excitement while attempting to educate them in why we do these things has been awesome. Alpine’s fundraising efforts have been awesome with a huge push for JANS Winter Welcome Opportunity Drawing ticket sales. To see this level of support, gives all of our sport directors great hope that we can bring the same energy and enthusiasm to all aspects of our club. Thank you Alpine families for taking the lead in this effort!

Freeski

Basic and Enhanced Dryland for PCSS Freeski programs is well underway with athletes training Mondays and Wednesdays at the UOP. 

The Big Mountain Team is welcoming 60 new athletes on top of 60 returning athletes with registration still open. To help manage this growth we are excited to announce that Kellen Montgomery has been promoted to Skills Local Team Head Coach which will allow better connection and communication with our Local Skills Team athletes. Sarah Taylor will be able to focus her attention on the Advanced Skills Team Athletes while Head Coach Eric Praetorius will be able to focus more of his time on the Competition Team and Backcountry athletes while overseeing the program as a whole.

The Park and Pipe Team returned from a successful trip to the Stelvio Glacier in Bormio Italy with National and International Team’s  Head Coaches Leah Stroud and Keith Shipman paring up for some stellar training. We are just about complete with onboarding Josh Poindexter who will take over as Head Coach of the Park & Pipe Local Skills Team now that Ian “Smuff” Punnett is leading the Regional Skills Team.

Hybrid Team welcomes back Head Coach Sawyer Stroud and will be adding a couple of new coaches as well. 

Look forward to personal goal setting and season planning meetings over the next 6 weeks if you haven’t already completed one yet. We are excited to see more early season snow to keep what has fallen in good shape this year. Think Snow!


First on the snow training

Cross Country

October has been an exciting month for the cross country team. The Devo team was thrilled to get on snow October 13th for the 1st time of the season. The Comp team took a camp to Driggs Idaho where they rollerskied, ran, and biked with the Tetons in the background. They also learned how to cook meals for each other. We are increasing our staff for the winter to accommodate our growing programs and look forward to working with some new coaches. Our returning coaches are working on coach training including on their US Ski and Snowboard level 100 certification.

We were pleased to hear Wes Campbell was named Youth Athlete of the Year by US Biathlon this past week, a much-earned honor. Our athletes have been competing in different endurance sports during the fall including cross country running, trail running and mountain biking. The cross country skiers have been great at competing in the PC Fall Trail Series! Thank you to everyone who came out and ran to support PCSS! 

We had several athlete participate in the Schützenski Festival at Soldier Hollow this past weekend in both rollerski and biathlon competitions. Our 1st on snow camp will be in West Yellowstone November 20th - 28th.

Athletes training hike

Athletes training hike

Moguls

The mogul team left over the weekend for a 3-day trip to Arapahoe Basin, Colorado. We head to Idre Fjäll, Sweden on November 6th for more training and a FIS competition. 

Upon the conclusion of our water ramp season, many athletes have qualified new tricks and are looking forward to transitioning these new skill from water to snow. Slader Rodman, Joey Kavas, and Kylie Kariotis all qualified cork-720s. Kassidy Lynch qualified both front flip and back-full. 

Many of our athletes attend the Winter Sports School here in Park City, and they are working hard to wrap up their work and finish the school year on November 19th. On October 23rd we also want to wish a happy 19th birthday to Jackson Crockett!