Hello NZSIA and SBINZ members!
At the start of the season this year, SBINZ went through a selection process to establish the six snowboarders who will be representing our association at Interski in Argentina – but you probably knew that already if you’re reading this blog!
Well, this past Wednesday the six members of the SBINZ Interski Team got together at Cardrona Alpine Resort for our first on-snow training session. We couldn’t have asked for a better day with glorious sunshine and awesome conditions.
The day kicked off with a few laps through the pipe and a good test of the fresh corduroy on the trails. Spirits amoung the crew were high and everyone was focused on the day ahead.
There were a number of outcomes we hoped to achieve for the day, including filming short intro videos to each member of the SBINZ Interski Team, establishing the topics for our on-snow clinics, as well as the indoor presentation with the Ski Team, that we will be presenting at Interski.
The overall theme set for Interski 2015 is Retention in Snow Sports. We’ve come to the decision that we will focus heavily on this topic throughout both our clinics (although in two different ways), sharing with other organisations how we currently tackle this issue and how SBINZ as an organisation can help to increase the number of snowboard participants to the sport.
After a lot of brainstorming and discussion the direction and content for the clinics began to develop with great ideas coming from all team members. To give you a very rough idea, one of our clinics will look at versatility of SBINZ instructors and the other will focus on a teaching model that we’re currently working on implementing.
Throughout the day we broke into smaller groups to give continuous peer to peer feedback on our individual riding. We rode the whole mountain from pipe and park, to the off-piste. We even had time to lay some early-morning trenches.
As a team we want to ensure we arrive at Interski showing our versatility and high standard of riding achieved in the SBINZ system and constantly demonstrated by our membership – that’s you!
The SBINZ Interski Team would like to say a big thank you to Cardrona Alpine Resort for putting on such a great day for us.
Cheers!
Rhys Jones loving his hand plants in the Cardrona pipe!
Sean Thompson styling out a frontside 3 on the new Cardrona intermediate jump line called Antlers Alley – awesome name by the way!
Richie Johnston laying out a euro-carve while the boys setup for ones of their own
Sam Smith and Rhys Jones in a train through the intermediate jump line
The SBINZ Interski Team of six, Rhys Jones, Sean Thompson, Sam Smith, Dan Burton, Richie Johnston, Keith Stubbs