At the helm of the BSF Freeride program is Coach Bailey Servais, whose passion for skiing is palpable both on and off the snow. “Skiing is such a simple thing, but it’s the best thing. It’s hard not to want to share it. A lot of the kids are equally as passionate. It’s a great symbiosis.”
Evan Weiss, executive director for BSF, says, “Bailey has been a great coach for BSF, first as one of our top Alpine coaches, and now leading the Freeride Team. She is a strong mentor to all our athletes and an effective program organizer. It is also important to recognize her as one of the few women heading up a Freeride program in the country.”
“Seeing how many more girls we have in Freeride right now is really cool,” says Bailey. “That’s what I wish I’d had growing up. They’re all so encouraging of each other.” She loves watching her athletes become more comfortable with nerves and developing the confidence that they can do difficult things.
Bailey grew up as an alpine ski racer at Buck Hill in Minnesota. “I didn’t know what mountains were till I was 13.” When she moved to Bozeman to attend MSU, she spent a year racing for the club team before deciding it was time to change it up. Bailey started coaching for BSF’s Alpine Development (Devo) team, and also began entering adult freeride competitions, including the Bridger Gully Freeride Comp and International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA) events.
With a number of alpine, freestyle, snowboarding, and freeski athletes showing interest in trying out some IFSA Freeride competitions, BSF trialed a part-time team in 2021, and Bailey coached both the Alpine team and the Freeride pilot during that season.
Coaching life has a lot of challenges–working every weekend in the winter, long travel days, and lots of logistics planning–but the everyday moments make it worth it as the kids grow and learn in the course of a season. “When a kid gets their first 360 is pretty cool,” says Bailey. “Or seeing a kid and their relief after stomping a run, and how their friends crowd them with hugs at the finish. The support in this sport is really incredible.”
Skiers and snowboarders picking a line between trees, jumping off rocks, and flowing down the mountain? There’s a name for that: it’s called Freeride.
Bridger Ski Foundation’s Freeride team is in year two as a full-fledged program, doubling in size from 25 athletes to more than 50 this season. Participants are 12-18 years old, and given the lure of Bridger Bowl’s expansive big mountain terrain, it’s no surprise that kids are lining up to participate.
Freeride (aka big mountain) skiing as a sport is essentially using natural features of a mountain face to score as high as you can in five categories: line, control, style and energy, fluidity, and technique, as determined by a judging panel. The governing body that sanctions events around North and South America is the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA), and was founded in the 90s by none other than Shane McConkey. The discipline of freeride has grown dramatically in the past few years across the country and the world.
The BSF Freeride team, led by Head Coach Bailey Servais, starts every day by setting intentions and goals, so that kids know what they’re working on, whether it’s mental or technical, short or long term. Training days at Bridger involve a lot of drills, developing air awareness (practicing tricks), hiking the ridge and fun video sessions. “A big part of it is teaching kids an analysis of risk and consequence,” says Coach Bailey. “We’re teaching them to rein it in. A big part of junior freeride is that judges never want to be scared by what they’re seeing.”
January 26-27: IFSA FREERIDE COMP AT BRIDGER
BSF will host the first sanctioned IFSA junior competition at Bridger Bowl, with athletes from the Northern Region (MT & WY), including U12s - U19s. Spectators welcome! Learn more at www.bridgerskifoundation.org/events/IFSA.
