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January 22, 2021
Greetings SBSEF,
Hallelujah it's snowing!!! Hard to believe that we are approaching the midpoint of the season already. Despite the fact that we have not had much in the way of snowfall so far, the skiing has been really good, and we have witnessed tremendous development with the athletes.
SBSEF Alumni continue to shine in early race results with Jared Goldberg notching a career-best 6th place finish at the World Cup in Val Gardena, Italy, and today snagged a top 20 in the legendary Hahnenkamm Downhill in Kitzbuehel, Austria, the Super Bowl of ski races! Also today Bella Wright scored her first World Cup top 20 at the Downhill at Crans Montana, Switzerland.
Current SBSEF athlete Jeremy Mathers has been training and racing in Europe with the US Ski Team and grabbed a 3rd place finish and a great result in a stacked FIS race in Passo San Pellegrino, Italy just yesterday.
Here in Intermountain Division, we have seen a strong start to the season as well. At the FIS level, we have seen strong finishes at the races at Snow King in Jackson, Wyoming. Townsend Mikell led the way in the Men's slalom with impressive moves up, starting 59th and moving into the 25th and 14th spot in the two slalom races, winning the second run of race two! Max Holdaway also made impressive leaps in slalom starting 76th and finishing 32nd & 27th respectively. Asa Miller snagged a strong 6th place finish in the Men's first GS race. Every SBSEF athlete made strong moves up during the race series. Five of our U19 Women traveled to Aspen Highlands in Colorado to get their first taste of FIS Downhill action, and are currently racing tech in Jackson.
The U16s also kicked their season off in Jackson, Wyoming at the Wes Barron Memorial Super G. Sofie Haggard led the charge on the Women's side with finishes of 3rd, 3rd, and 5th. On the Men's side Connor Stone had a 2nd and a 5th place finish, with teammates Max Jarvie and Brandon Mayhew also finding the podium with 3rd place finishes of their own, and a total of 3 top tens for Brandon. Many impressive moves up and strong finishes highlighted a nice race week for the team.
The U14s are competing this weekend in Sun Valley, Idaho for their first races of the year. Jfast is racing at Snowbird this week. Our Alpine Devo Cookie Cup is set for next weekend.
I feel that we have collectively done a very good job of adapting our operations to the pandemic environment we have been in for nearly a year now. Yes, things are difficult in some ways, and there are things we regrettably aren't able to do. However, we have also found real efficiencies in some areas, and have been able to provide training as effectively as ever, for this I am proud and grateful. From what I have seen and heard we are getting more done than most similar programs, and with the support of Snowbird we will be able to host our full complement of events.
We have proven that we can successfully train and compete even during this pandemic. Still, we need to stay vigilant and stick to the operational model we have established for the remainder of the season, particularly as we get into competition season.
Next week we will host our first race of the season at Snowbird with the South Series GS races, we then have a very busy few weeks of events and will be hosting races for nearly all the different age groups. IFSA events come to Snowbird in March and our Freeride athletes will take the stage on home turf. It is exciting that we are now into competition season, and I feel the team is poised for success.
SBSEF is organizing an auction and fundraiser event to be held around the Snow Cup, more information coming soon!
For Alpine off-season camps we are working to confirm details but are planning on Mt. Hood August 1-10, and Aspen Nov. 13-21 (exact dates to be confirmed).
--
Bridger Call
Executive Director
Snowbird Sports Education Foundation
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Click on Bella's picture to view a video of her fast run!
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Our First Race of the Season at Snowbird -- South Series GS -- Next Week!
Our Jfast athletes are ready to CRUSH the competition at the first South Series race of the season January 27-29, specifically on Wednesday and Thursday. We will be sure to share highlights on social media and you should check out live-timing daily.
New this season -- we will be LIVE STREAMING the race on YouTube. Race 1 & 2. Race 3 & 4. Race 5 & 6.
As always, you can follow along with Live Timing at home, too!
Volunteers - thank you in advance for donating your time to helping us host the best races of the season!
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Alpine Devo Update:
Devo's have finally started and we have 89 athletes this year! We also have our Devo Transition team which is 18 of our athletes. We have been working on GS getting ready for the Cookie Cup. YSL races have been pretty much canceled this year so we have taken on the responsibility of hosting our own series of events for our Devo's at Snowbird which are listed below:
Jan 30-31 Cookie Cup GS
Feb 20-21 Hot Coco Cup SL
Mar 13-14 IMD YSL Spring Fling at UOP
April 10-11 Big Mtn Comp
April 17-18 Scavenger Hunt
-- Jason Stone
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AltaBird Freeride Update:
The Freeride motto this year: "no matter the conditions, no matter the hurtles, we just love to ski!" Firm snow and low tide conditions have definitely forced our athletes and coaches to care for their bodies and equipment more, but it has certainly not dimmed their light and love of skiing. We've been training at both Alta and Snowbird and have some groups up at Woodward jump training on Thursday evenings. We are grateful for the opportunity to be on snow, and to be a team right now.
Competitions usually would be starting by now, but this season, comps have been scheduled later starting at the end of February. The Snowbird Comps will be held in mid-March.
We'll continue to do our snow dances and have fun out there! 
-Siri Wieringa
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Alpine U14 Update:
Our U14 team is competing this weekend in Sun Valley, Idaho, in their first qualifier of the season. The Grayhawk lift decided it needed a week off -- it is under repairs, so the slalom races were moved to Rotarun Ski Area, in Hailey. The word of the season is FLEXIBILITY and PIVOT, and SVSEF sure did some QUICK moves to resite the race at a great venue.
Results will be shared soon! Check out social media and live timing!
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SBSEF Snowboard --
still waiting for some events... but the training is going GREAT!
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Volunteers! Sign up ONLINE! We still have plenty of spots available.
- January 27-29 -- South Series GS
- February 8-9 -- FISU SL
- February 16-19 -- U16 GS & SL
- February 22-25 -- Bryce Astle Memorial FIS SL
- April 1-4 -- The SNOW CUP GS & SL
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