PA Ski League Demo Day takes off

Nathan Reiter/Daily Herald. A skier barrels down the hill at the "Speed Trap" station at the PA Ski League Demo Day at Little Red River Park on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023

They couldn’t have asked for more perfect conditions for the Prince Albert Ski League Demo Day that took place on Saturday afternoon.

A partly cloudy sky, no wind and temperatures above zero and a slight dusting of snow overnight provided the perfect conditions for the skiers at Little Red River Park.

Brian Linn was one of the coaches out on the hill Saturday afternoon working with one of four age divisions on the hill. He says the event is great at providing an opportunity to bond with the local ski community.

“I think it’s great at building community within the program bringing lots of fun and good time feelings to the sport of skiing. It also is the toe in the water for competition type things too, because we’ve got quite a young group and it’s growing. So, I think as our board is getting more and more organized and we’re getting kind of things together, this is just like the next progression in it.”

The event saw skiers broken into four groups by age division and split into four stations at the start of the day which saw the groups spend about 30 minutes per station before moving onto the next skill.

The most popular station of the day, dubbed the “Speed Trap” saw skiers, one at a time, race down the hill past a parent holding a radar gun who would record the speed down on a sheet of paper.

After the station work, the event saw the big air jump open around 4pm for skiers to take a run off the jump.

Linn says the event brings out the best in the skiers and gives coaches an opportunity to have develop skills.

“Once we bring out a few more people, we set the sound system up, get a few tunes going and it gets the vibe going. Even put in a little bit of blue down on the jumps. You mark everything down makes it that much more official for the kids and then they just start kind of pushing each other a little bit and it just grows. We’ve already started to see some kids do personal bests and things that they’ve never tried before and the days just getting started. So, I think it’s great for that progression and preventing plateaus in the kids development.”

One of the skiers taking part in the Demo Day was 14-year-old Nathan Walters.

Walters is in his fourth year of skiing. He says skiing is a sport you can lose track of time with if you enjoy it.

“It’s pretty warm out, which is really nice. It’s good to do this because I didn’t get to do it last year. It takes a little bit of practice, but you don’t want to get off the hill when you get into it. It’s super, super fun. And I would definitely consider doing it.”

sports@paherald.sk.ca

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