PSIA Fall Training

Every year in the Fall the Professional Ski Instructors of America host their 'fall training' for Divisional Educators - The people who coach and certify instructors.

As a member of the Alpine and Childrens Education Teams for Rocky Mountain, I was invited to spend five days at A Basin with the best instructors in the Rocky Mountains. It started off with a Keynote presentation from USSA (United States Ski And Snowboard Association) on their 'out of the box' approach to innovative coaching. We were hoping to be on-snow for our second day of training but mother nature was not co-operating and we were forced to be inside for safety reasons. After going over the usual office updates, we studied some footage of Michaela Shifrin in a GS course and compared it to footage our ski instructors skiing high performance turns to come up with strategies to help our instructors be more like Miki! We also the developed ways to introduce this movement pattern to our guests earlier in their career.

The third day was on-snow at A-Basin and we worked in groups to help each other experiment with the strategies that we had discussed the day prior, as well as warming up our clinic leading and personal ski skills for the upcoming season.

Day 4 switched gears with most of the 200 participants leaving just the Kids and Nordic groups. It was great to see XC skiers load the chair at 8am to do some laps before the mountain opened to the public. We received feedback from the kids committee and welcomed our new team members before heading out on the slopes to practice moving through three presentation styles: presenting, teaching and facilitating.

We went back inside on day 5 to work on clinician staffing and editing work books and quizzes.

A big thanks to A Basin for getting the groups on snow given the snow conditions in the US at the moment!

Check us out at Colorado Snowsport Academy
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Good Luck

I wish good luck to all those going to Snowbird for the PSIA National Teams Selection this week. I will not be able to attend as I have suffered an injury that has left me unable to ski.

I crashed while skiing at the end of March, and although physical therapy was going well, the training for the event in snowbird has injured me further. On Thursday the doctors restricted me to no skiing in any capacity.

I am honored to be considered in the same peer group as the other candidates, and I look forward to working with them in the future and competing for a spot in four years.

I visited Snowbird for the first time in the middle of March in preparation for tryouts and had an absolute blast. I got to meet Rob Sogard and he introduced me to a friendly snowboard instructor who donated some of his employee tickets to me. Everyone that we met was really friendly and the terrain was absolutely stunning. It looks like it will be a great and testing tryout. Good luck all!

Tom is going to Utah

On February 15th, the Professional Ski Instructors of America's national office invited me to go to Utah at the end of April to attend the National Alpine Team tryouts. I am one of 45 instructors from around the country who made it through the first round.

PSIA is looking to form a team of 12 alpine instructors who they feel are inspirational educators and skiers. This team of 12 will travel the country for four years, providing clinics to instructors at ski areas all over the US. In 2015, the team will be attending the International Ski Congress or Interski, where all the skiing nations come together and share ideas and present to each other.

The team tryouts will be held at Snowbird, Utah from the 22nd to the 26th of April. There will be skiing tasks, teaching tasks and interviews taking place over the course of five days. I look forward to going to the event  and skiing with the top 45 teachers in the US.

And now the training begins ...

Examiner

In mid February, I went to Aspen for a few days to attend the Rocky Mountain Examiner Selection.

A little background history: Ski instructors in the US are certified by the Professional Ski Instructors of America(PSIA). You start as a Level1 instructor and can eventually become a Level 3 (fully certified instructor). Beyond that you can become a trainer of instructors to help them pass their exams.

Examiners are trainers, hired by PSIA, to administer exams and provide educational clinics to instructors. I was delighted to be one of two people hired by PSIA this year to join their education staff.

Val & Andy studying on the chair

The selection was over two days and broken down into four sections:
1. Skiing - Two runs, 9 tasks and many eyes on you as you perform
2. Presenting - Two outdoor presentations watched by five examiners, and one indoor presentation watched by three examiners
3. Movement Analysis - Two sessions, you watch a video of a skier and describe everything you see happening, why is it happening and what you would change to make it better.
4. Interview - Five minutes in a room with four interviewers

There were 17 candidates this year and they were all excellent skiers, teachers and people. I met some great people and am really excited to see some of them become examiners in the future.

I still have some steps before I become a fully fledged examiner. I have to shadow two more level one exams and attend a clinic next fall. I'm guessing by next January they will put me out to work.