New sports program heats up

45 kids across three sports

“We are, at the core, a winter sports community,” says director of Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team Drew Cesati. With that in mind, Cesati and Crested Butte Mountain Resort developed the Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) and will kick off their inaugural year this Saturday, November 29.
The creation
of the program was
announced this past
summer, filling a void
left by the closing of the
Crested Butte Academy.
The CBMST offers a variety of
levels in instruction/coaching in
three areas: snowboarding, freeride
skiing (which includes park and
pipe as well as “extreme” skiing)
and alpine racing.
Cesati put out the call to
interested coaches over the fall
eventually amassing a staff 10
strong, consisting of both locals and
imports.
Woody Lindenmyer heads the
freeride skiing program, adding
locally grown and honed skiers Ben
Somrack and Cody Price to his staff.
Christian Robertson, who
spent years coaching at the Crested
Butte Academy, heads the snowboard
division and pulled in Jason
Pogoloff from the local ranks, as
well as Kevin Boucher out of Maine
and Karl Berdimurat from Whitefish,
Montana.
Kevin Brousseau joins the program
from New York and will head
the alpine racing program. Brousseau
comes from a long history of
alpine racing on the East Coast.
“Kevin was a fortunate grab,”
says Cesati. “He’s got a wealth of
knowledge.”
Joining Brousseau is Brett
Wagenheim, fresh off of four years
of Division I racing for Colby
College and bringing in a fresh
perspective from the extremely
competitive college racing circuit.
Rounding out the alpine racing
program is Marni Joslyn, who
will run the J4 (ages 11-12) racing
program. Joslyn has years of racing
experience and coaching working
with the Crested Butte Ski and
Snowboard Club.
All three sports offer three levels
of commitment, with two days a
week of training, three days a week
of training or a full-time program
of six days of training, including a
conditioning component available.
“It’s a very comprehensive
program,” says Cesati. “We’re trying
to create a program accessible
by a wide variety of athletes.”
While the coaching staff is in
place, the success of the program ultimately
rests on participation, and,
so far numbers are looking good.
“We’ve got 45 kids (ages 8-18)
right now and I feel pretty good
about it for the first year out,” says
Cesati.
The CBMST attracted the
interest of not only local kids but a
handful of athletes from the Front
Range, as well as a ski racer from
Sweden.
Cesati expects the
numbers to grow as the
program takes hold and
athletes are out on the
snow.
“I think we’re going
to create some energy
with the kids involved
and I’m hoping by January
1 we’ll be around 65,”
says Cesati.
So far, 16 of the 45
kids signed up have
been dry-land training
since November 3, and
the team made two trips
to Loveland to get kids
on snow for a total of six
days.
Furthermore, Cesati touts the
efforts of the resort to see the program
succeed, with plans in place
to close runs for training purposes
and continue work on the halfpipe
and terrain park.
“The mountain resource plan
is far superior to anything we’ve
seen in the past,” says Cesati.
“They’ve been unbelievably supportive
and we’re excited to see
where it can go.”
They will open their home
mountain training at 8 a.m. at the
yurt this Saturday, with kids hitting
the hill at 9 o’clock for a morning
session.
Anyone interested in the
program can stop by the yurt, located
at the parking lot north of the
Grand Lodge from 2 to 4 p.m. on
Saturday to meet the coaching staff.
“We’re building this thing from
the bottom up, which is nice,” says
Cesati. “People are starting to take
notice of what’s going on.”