Message from the Executive Director
February and March are the busiest months at PCSS! Hundreds of PCSS athletes have been competing locally at Park City Resort, Woodward and the UOP, as well as nationally and internationally at numerous other venues. As you will read below in our sport program updates, many PCSS athletes are achieving podiums for the first time this season and/or being invited to coveted races and events including Junior Nationals and Junior Worlds, while others, like our young PCSShredders, are experiencing skiing and riding in a team environment for the first time.
In addition to participating in skiing and snowboarding events, many of you joined in our club-wide celebration at last month's "Watch Party." Nearly 1,000 people, including local Olympians, turned out to celebrate our athletes, our community and the spirit of the Olympics with an action-filled evening of fun and cheer at the UOP.
We are so thankful for parent support. Thank you for showing up to cheer on athletes and for the countless volunteer hours you have contributed to help PCSS deliver programs and host sport and fundraising events. We are humbled by your hard work and shared commitment to keeping local youth skiing, snowboarding and community building in Park City! We appreciate you!
Finally, I hope you will take a moment to view the video below. It provides a brief but inspiring glimpse of athletes across our club in action and doing what they love best . . .
Club News & Upcoming Events
• 3/12 - Winter Snow Fest - This Family Friendly event still has fire pits available. Proceeds benefit scholarships for PCSS athletes. Utah Olympic Park. Register here or Volunteer here.
• 3/12 & 3/13 - FIS Continental Cup Ski Jumping & Nordic Combined - International competition @ UOP. Get your tickets here or Volunteer here.
• 3/18 - 3/20 - JR National Moguls Comp - Mens & Women's moguls comp @ UOP. Volunteer here.
• 3/25 - Park City Town Race Series - Family friendly racing at the Utah Olympic Park. Register here or Volunteer here.
• 4/3 - PCSS Pond Skim - Club wide pond skimming at the Utah Olympic Park. Registration TBA
Alpine training at Deer Valley
Division Updates
Park & Pipe
He have 2 athletes at Junior World Championships in Switzerland this week, Ben Fethke is competing in Halfpipe and Colby Johnson competing in Slopestyle. Cameron Brodrick hit the NorAm Cup top 3 for the second time this season and is currently ranked second with the opportunity to land on top after the final stop in Canada later this month. We have a crew headed to the final Futures Tour of the season out at Northstar where we will hopefully see a couple more athletes join Isabel Parada, Nikita Rubocki, Kaitlyn Reital and Ben Fethke earning a RevTour/NorAm Cup start for the next season. The World Cup Slopestyle tour is on it’s last leg with competitions in France and Switzerland so watch for performances from James Kanzler, and Connie Brogden who is coming off a Big Air Win at the NorAm Cup/RevTour in Aspen. We hosted our last local Halfpipe and Slopestyle competition at Park City Mountain this past week with PCSS athletes landing lots of podiums, results can be found here https://bigmtnwest.teamapp.com/teams?_list=v1. We have one more week of the USASA competition season and then e will be watching the ratings to see how many and who will qualify for the USASA Nationals at Copper Mountain in April. In the mean time we will me taking advantage of the spring snow this last month and the training opportunities here in PC to complete our goals for the season.
Snowboard
We are at the tail end of peak competition season, with sights set for championship season. All our regular training sessions still occur each day and time as scheduled, but athletes are additionally stretching themselves both young and old in their individual personal season goals and some with competition goals. We have two regional events here locally at Woodward and also here at Park City Mountain Feb 26 – Mar 4 Each weekend we are excited to see everyone bring the stoke to our regular training groups and ride with smiles from start to finish. While less easily measured, individual progression, enjoyment, and love for the sport are showing through at all levels! We love this. Our staff at every level need to be commended for their dedication and personal investment into our snowboard program and each and every child on hill. I can’t thank them all enough.
Big Mtn Team
The Park City IFSA competition recently went well with great snow and great weather. The PC big mtn team had several athletes on the podium over the two day period. Day two saw three podium sweeps with the 12-14 males, 12-14 Females, and the 15-18 Male skiers. Rex Schirman just received some needed points in Kirkwood with an 11th place finish out of 45 athletes. Several athletes are battling out the points game currently for an invitation to North American Championships coming up in April at Big Sky. The team has been enjoying the much needed snow we have recently gotten. With the powder skiing recently and the new snow in the forecast we are excited to finish out the season on a high note and plenty of face shots to go around. You can see all the recent action and smiles on athletes faces @pcss_big_mountain_freeski
Moguls
Our Noram Team returned home from competing in Apex, BC, Val St Come, QC, and Killington, VT. We had multiple podiums and best performances. We are excited for the athletes to get back to training for a few weeks before heading into championship season. The mogul team just finished up an exciting competitive weekend at the Utah Olympic Park over President’s Weekend. We had numerous athletes from our Afterschool and Fundamentals program compete in the DEVO Freestyle Mogul event on Saturday - congratulations to all those who competed! We also had a few of these young athlete step into the gate for their first Intermountain Regional Competition (also at the UOP) on Sunday and Monday. The FIS Elite/Full Time women swept the podium (and beyond) both days. Slader Rodman won the duals competition on Monday claiming his first career win. Joey Kavas rounded out the weekend with three top-ten finishes, and Tommy Bavaro laid down some excellent runs. We had multiple age-group medals from our younger athletes, and it was a very fun event! Now we are ramping up to host the 2022 US Freestyle Junior National Championships at the Utah Olympic Park March 16-21. We are expecting close to 200 athletes from around the country to attend this event and compete for the coveted title of Junior National Champion. We had two athletes qualify for Junior World Championships in Valmalenco, Italy at the end of March. We wish Jackson Crockett and Alli Macuga the best of luck as they compete in this renowned event!
Nordic Combined
PCSS Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined just returned from a trip to the East Coast for a US Cup in Brattleboro, VT and US Junior Championships in Salisbury, CT. The athletes competed in front of a huge crowd in Vermont, and coaches, athletes and local organizers managed challenging weather to pull off two great events. Highlights from the Junior Championships included Macey Olden bringing home silver in the U20 female individual jumping. In a competitive U16 Nordic Combined field, Root Roepke skied to third place. Unfortunately, after the race, he was disqualified due to a false start. He took the bad news with class, and can count on not making that mistake again. On Saturday, Root and teammate Ian Carmack finished off the final team event strong with the 2nd fastest time and a 6th place finish in the Nordic Combined team relay. This week, we’ll turn our eyes to Zakopane, Poland, where our athlete Josie Johnson and PCSS alum Paige Jones will be competing in the World Junior Championships. Our other athletes will finish off the competition season at Western Regional Championships in Steamboat Springs, CO March 4th and 5th.
Nordic
Park City Ski and Snowboard is elated to qualify 9 athletes and 2 alternates to Junior Nationals in Minnesota starting on March 7th. Wes Campbell and Sidney Bennion are also competing at Biathlon Youth and Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow. For the final JNQ in Jackson, we had 37 athletes competing in age groups U12 and up under the guidance of head coach Liz Stephen. We recently announced the recipients of the inaugural Gordon Lange Scholarship, a merit and financial needs based scholarship to honor those who represent Gordon’s values as a coach. Seniors Wes Campbell and Elena Grissom received scholarship money to attend Junior Nationals this year. Both of these athletes have been part of PCSS since the beginning and it is an honor to recognize them as seniors. Our development programs in Park City are going well with kids racing locally at Wasatch Citizens Series races and at the Cocoa Loppet. The 1st Cocoa Loppet took place at White Pine Nordic and was a chance for our Kickers and Gliders to try racing in a welcoming environment. We had 43 youth take part, skiing a total of 384 total laps or 96 miles. On average each kid skied more than 2 miles. Another highlight of the season was having the opportunity to get some of our parents who had never skied before to try cross country skiing for the 1st time. This has been a goal for a number of years knowing that there are so many people who work in Park City and support the ski industry but are not presented with the opportunity to try skiing themselves. It was great to have it happen thanks to the partnership of White Pine Nordic and the Park City Community Foundation. We even had comp athletes Caio Brown and Bailey Carmack teach in Spanish. It was an absolute joy to see the courage of these adults to try a new sport for the 1st time, like it and want to keep doing it. Now these families are able to go out and ski as a family like so many in our club do.
Skimo
PCSS SkiMo is coming off an amazing showing at the US National Championships in Vai, CO. In the individual, Sam Kirschner took the top spot in the U14 Men. Emmet Itoi took the top spot for U16 men, with Maci Zaniello coming in third (Side note from coach Nick Francis, he “also takes the award for perseverance - I don't know if I have ever seen anyone so cold at a finish line”), and for U18 men it was Griffin Briley, Wes Perkins, and Ethan Romer in 1-2-3! Our team continued to race strong in the sprint race. In U14 men, Sam Kirsher took gold, with Joshua Itoi taking home bronze. For U16 men, Emmet Itoi added a silver to his haul. In U18 men, Griffin came away with gold, Wes with silver, and Ethan with bronze. In the U20 men, Caio Brown had a great race and finished with a sixth place. The final race of the weekend was the vertical. Again in the U14 men, Sam took the gold with Joshua Itoi taking home the bronze. For U16 Men, Emmet had a stellar race for bronze. In the U18 men, Griffin took the win, with Wes coming in for the bronze. Prior to the Vail events, Griffin Briley represented PCSS and the US at European Championships in Boí Taüll Spain. He couldn’t have made us prouder, with huge wins in the U18 Vertical and Individual races! Next up, we turn our eyes to local racing, with the third PCSS Town Series at the UOP on March 4th, and the Junior National Championships at Brighton March 19 and 20.
Alpine
What a whirl wind of a month February was! Our Alpine groups amassed over 40 races this past month with and some top notch results to show! We kicked off the month with FIS Groups at The Bryce Astle Tech Series at Park City and Snowbird which saw Mia Hunt win both Women’s Slaloms as well as Benny Brown winning the 2nd GS. Groups splitting up at the highest levels of our team is common and this month we saw athletes attending Nor Ams in Canada and the Eastern US as well as FIS Uni races as well as other Western races in the region. Our U16 Crew saw the rescheduled Sean Nurse Memorial races come to the month of Feb as well as the Laura Flood Memorial Races in Sun Valley. At both series, the groups pulled in some strong results led by Austin Aten, Own Platt, Duncan Davis and Jack Morris on the mens side and Kira Thomas, Dylan Guay, and Vivian Turner on the women’s. Our U14s ripped up the SG races at Snowbasin with 2 wins from Tasman Rearick. Other top results came from Spider Schlopy, Xander Sivey and Riley Gellner for the men and Amalie Swift, Macy Lawrence, and Winter Rothwell for the women. South Series racing came back around for its 2nd and 3rd rounds of the season at Snowbird and Sundance. Our U12’s and Devos were making waves with Andrew Johnson, Sebastian Turner, Nate Brown and Arlo Hochman scoring some our top results in the boys while Lilla Stein, Sydney Daly, Cleo Abbott and Zali Rearick rounded out our top ladies results. As we roll into Championship season, we have many athletes attending their age specific Regional and National Championships as well as some of our highest level athletes competing in International Country wide championships. Lets keep the fire burning and keep those results coming.
Devo Freestyle
Devo freestyle is wrapping up a busy two weeks of competitions! Many athletes competed in their first sanctioned competitions over these past two weeks in Halfpipe, Slopestyle and big mountain at Park City Mountain and Woodward. Everyone who competed skied great, and put down solid runs! Devo athlete Oskar Hove ended up taking home 2nd place in his age group in both the IFSA big mountain comp and the USASA slopestyle comp, and James Jaquet ended up in 3rd in the big mountain comp for his age group. Devo also wrapped up our devo series competitions this weekend at the UOP. These are our laid back, just for fun competitions we hold in slopestyle and moguls. Our focus is on having fun and learning how to compete. Every athlete skied great and it was awesome to see all the progress they made over the season! Devo is wrapping up its UOP sessions this week and will continue with weekend training at PCM till the end of March. PCSShredders is wrapping up their season this week and finishing off week 3 of freestyle skiing. This season we saw a ton of improvement from everyone as they learned skills in alpine, ski jumping, cross country and freestyle/freeride. The kids had a lot of fun throughout the season and hopefully found their passion in one of the many PCSS ski or snowboard disciplines.
Aerials
The whole team competed in the NorAm Cup Tour. We hosted 4 of the 6 competitions here in Park City. Derek Kruger hit the top 3 twice and Connor Curran reached the top 3 once, both ending up in the top 6 for the season. Reese Muzny and Amelia Glogowski both competed their first doubles. Each of the team had a personal best in the past 2 weeks. They are headed to the US Nationals this week and then we will see the following athletes going over to Europe for a couple of Europa Cup competitions and the following athletes will finish the trip competing in the World Junior Championships in Italy; Amelia Glogowski, Reese Muzny, Catherine McEneany, Connor Curran, Ashton Salwan, Ian Schoenwald.
