Recently, the Pro Team hosted 18 U14 and U16 skiers from all over the West as the first BSF Youth Camp. It was such a great experience as an athlete to take part in helping to lead a camp like this. It is always so fun to help younger skiers to improve and try to inspire younger athletes love for skiing.
The camp started out on a Tuesday and ran all the way to Friday. The campers stayed on the MSU campus in the Hapner hall dorms. The whole Pro Team was leading the camp, so we rotated through staying in the dorms every night as chaperones. Nutrition was taken care of by the MSU dining hall across the street, an excellent resource during the camp for both us leaders and campers. Activities kicked off immediately with a rollerski in one of the large parking lots on campus, going over some basic rollerski drills and V2 drills, and wrapping up with a fun game of rollerski hockey. After dinner, everyone enjoyed a competitive game of soccer, and once everyone was all tired out, we gathered in the common area for a presentation. Andy and Kate presented, going over general training stuff as well as a cool slideshow of Kate’s recent trip to the Eagle Glacier with the U.S. Ski Team. Everyone wrapped up the meeting by writing out their own goal pyramid for the camp. The next day kicked off with a quick jog and breakfast before heading out to do some skate agility and drills in a neighborhood south of town. Andy led the group through some cornering drills before the group split off into smaller, athlete-led focus groups. My group worked on double pole and V1 starts, both individually and head to head. One of the coolest things was watching how much everyone improved, even after just two or three tries.
That afternoon, we met back up at Lindley Park for some balance activities and bounding. As a big group, we all did some great balance drills, including balancing with both eyes closed and balancing while tossing a tennis ball back and forth with a partner. Afterwards we all broke back out into our small groups to go over bounding drills. Then we all came together to run through a bounding course that Andy led, which definitely got the heart rate up. To cap it off, we finished the session with a core circle, before heading over to Bozeman Beach for a well deserved swim.
The next day, we ventured out to the Triple Tree neighborhood for a V1 focused session. We followed a similar structure as the day before, with some time spent in small Pro Team-led groups and a larger group session as well. It was really fun to see the campers' excitement, especially their enthusiasm to take on the big descent down to the bottom of the neighborhood. That afternoon, the group headed out to a reservoir south of town for a run and swim.
For the final day, Graham and I got up early and headed to the Crosscut rollerski track to set up an agility course for a group rollerski and running adventure race. The groups started by working their way through the agility course before trading the rollerskis for running shoes to navigate their way around a running course on the Nordic ski trails. Groups had to use a map to find the way to various checkpoints, where upon arrival, they had to document themselves completing a specific challenge, such as “best jump photo” or “human pyramid.”
This camp overall was a success! Not only is it super gratifying from a coaching perspective, but it is also a great opportunity for us as athletes to revisit the basic drills and to gain insight on technique from a different perspective. The best part was seeing how stoked the younger athletes are about skiing!
