Nordic Combined

PARK CITY, UT – Last weekend in Lausanne, Switzerland, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the addition of Women’s Nordic Combined at the upcoming 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games being held in Lausanne. The inclusion of the women’s event is part of a greater effort by the IOC towards gender equity that has seen the inclusion of more women’s fields and mixed fields over the past decade. READ MORE HERE.

Snowboarding

Three SSWSC snowboard program athletes joined coach Maddy Schaffrick last week in Mt Hood, Oregon for some summer slashing. Jake Suchowski, Rowan Drake, and Meredith Connor joined in with High Cascade Snowboard Camp and took part in their on-hill terrain park and halfpipe, and off-hill trampolines and skateboard park. High Cascade is a staple in the snowboard industry, known as the camp that many professional snowboarders grew up attending as kids and continue to attend for their own summer training. It’s fun for the kids to not only meet the people they watch You-Tube videos of and read about in Snowboarder Mag but also drop in to the same exact feature one of them is learning an extremely advanced trick on. The kids get to watch a pro rider’s progression throughout an average training day; their arrival time, off-hill warm up, on-hill warm up, what they do when they fall, how they may hike the same feature 20 times in a row to do the same exact trick 20 times in a row just to get it ingrained into their muscles. On top of all that, since most of the pro riders there are just big kids still in love with summer camp, athletes can watch them play and get creative on their snowboards and then ride the chairlift with them and chat about life or snowboarding. While they were there last week we shared the hill with Louie Vito, Toby Miller, Shawn White, Anna Gasser, and Spencer O’Brien.

The inspiration was visible in Jake, Rowan, and Meredith. They mainly rode the halfpipe, and the progression Coach Maddy witnessed from them in that one week of training was exciting for everyone. Although they didn’t escape the heat while they were there, throwing some slashes in the slush offered just enough refreshment and has gotten them very excited for the winter to come.