DAY 4: Words from the U16 Gang

After skiing I thought it would be a good idea asking the athletes contribute to this blog. I thought this was excellent considering the athletes are journaling on a regular basis practicing their reflection skills. Its a great way to observe the information that sticks and what is meaningful to them in the day. I would also like to mention that the athletes are getting along famously. This can sometimes be a challenge when new team members join. They all stick together through the day and watch group movies eating popcorn and granola bars in their downtime. I also missed the last bit of the day today fighting off some bug that had my stomach turning. 

Meet Oliver. He has been at the top of our training lane
the last few sessions.There are a few stray dogs around that
are humanized and very friendly.

"Today was magical as the sun rose over the mountains casting a pink glow and making the snow sparkle like diamonds in the sky. We rode the five T-bars to our final destination, which was lane 16. We skied two courses this morning; one a brushy course and the other an apex drill course with stubbies. The whole time we kept in mind to stay over the outside ski and keeping our upper bodies stable (no tipping or hipping).

We did a lot of video during the ski session so that at the end of the day we could see what improvements we had made. Throughout the days we've been free skiing really well and now we're trying to work our awesome skills into the gates. In the afternoon Kat was feeling under the weather because of the sausage burgers the other day so we skied the last 1/4 of the day with Gab. He is the new FIS coach and was working the FIS team until we went to get him. He continued to shoot some video of us in our drills and we ended the day free-skiing where we do our morning warmup. That concludes our ski day today hope we have another great day tomorrow!"

- BECCA, MIKE, ABBY, HUNTER, NORA, & NICHOLAS

If I was to summarize the importance of today:

1. The view is undoubtly incredible.

2. The athletes feet hurt and are cold upon arrival after 5 T-bars.

3. Regardless of how scenic and sore their feet are they will still set out to work and can focus on their goals for the day.

4. My health is a concern to them because while fighting off my 24 hour flu bug (or sausage burger bug) they brought me bread and water from the lunch I missed.

5. They forgot to include the video session post-ski where we compared vantage points in the different drills and in free-skiing. Tomorrow we are going to do a 1-on-1 session for video and take a look at how they are progressing in reflecting on their days on snow. 

I am feeling much better after bread, rice and bananas and we are set to go for a long day tomorrow. Please look forward to some action shots of your athletes to be posted tomorrow to round out our SL session.

The sun sets on another wonderful day here in El Colorado, Chile and we are set for clear skies and sunshine tomorrow