Snow Riders
By: Dylan Rompf
How does they ski team do it? Leaving at 5:00 am the athletes scarcely open there eyes enough to get there bearings strait while they load a white SUV in the Conoco/Loaf’n’Jug parking lot with bags, skis, poles, boots, and especially a pillow for the long trip ahead. This was the scene three hours before the Beaver Creek slalom on January 11. The morning did not start out in the teams favor after the school districts SUV, used for transporting the ski team to races and practices, failed to start with a bad battery and a low gas tank, already late.
However, the day was not lost and upon reaching the hill, almost frazzled from being hard pressed to make registration, Coach Bob Feroldi is in rare form. Thinking ahead to the registration, the race to come, and how he will handle close to sixteen teenagers at a high end ski resort is about the equivalent of balancing a tray of fine china and riding down stairs on a unicycle. He seems to handle it well, telling the racers to change into their skin tight “speed suits” and be out on the hill before the lifts open.
After ridin
g the main chairlift from the base of Beaver Creek resort to about three fourths up the 11,000 foot mountain and well above the race run. The racers must slip, or scrape the excess snow from the crusty base layer beneath, sometimes even slipping more than once to maintain the ideal surface for using the sharpened edges of their slalom skis.When it comes time to race the athletes must strip down to their racings suits, some more colorful than others, but all of them are anything but warm, and enter a roped off area around the starting gate. The starting gate is not at all a glamorous thing, just a stiff rubber “stick” that starts the racers time when moved or brushed by as the racers begin their run. Although a Slalom course is almost self explanatory while it is being ran, a slalom course is as confusing to the casual onlooker as it is to the racer in the gate. This adds to the already abounding nerves of the racers.
After running a course successfully the racer is allowed a second run. Almost all of the Platte Canyon racers finished their first run, but Nathan Smith, a senior, was DQ ed (short for disqualified) for crashing and losing a ski near the end of his first run. The second run was not as successful for the boys, all but three were DQed when they missed a confusing gat
e setup or crashed somewhere else on the course. Fortunately one of our boys, Kenny Sause, qualified in the top one third of 147 others for state, congratulations Kenny.Beaver Creek Slalom was overall not as successful as the team had hoped, but assuredly a worthwhile experience for all of the participants.
