Mountain Sports Team takes on USASA Nationals

Aaron Blunck, Kai Sherman and Josie Byron lead charge

A season’s worth of training comes to fruition at the USASA Nationals in Copper every year for young athletes from around the nation. This season 12 Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) skiers and snowboarders qualified for the prestigious event, making the trip to the big show held April 2-12.
CBMST skiers Aaron Blunck, Josie Byron, Tristan Kraatz, Sarah and Grace Johnson, Tiffany Taaca and Kai Sherman competed in a variety of events from halfpipe and slopestyle to skiercross.
In the end, four of the CBMST skiers stepped up on the podium, with one taking a national title.
As has been the case for the past several years, Blunck led the charge for the local crew. Blunck made the jump this year from age class competition to compete in the Open Class, the top of the heap for USASA skiers, with cash prizes on the line.
“The difference between the Open Class and age group is huge,” says CBMST coach Hans vonBreisen.
Blunck has been on a roll all season in the halfpipe and kept it going into Nationals. With near-miserable weather plaguing athletes the day of the event, vonBreisen and Blunck opted to go with his insurance run for his finals runs.
“He just wanted to throw his go-to run and make it as clean and as big as possible,” says vonBreisen.
After suffering a hiccup on his first of two finals runs, Blunck rallied in his final effort, taking second place in the Open Class in the halfpipe and earning a $500 payday.
Tiffany Taaca put together a solid week of competition in the 10- to 12-year-old age group. With her results from halfpipe, slopestyle and skiercross, Taaca finished the week in third place in the overall standings.
The surprise of the week came from Kai Sherman. Sherman raced in one skiercross event this season in Crested Butte as part of the Southwest Series, a qualifier series for Nationals.
Racing in the boys 10-12 age group, Sherman made the cut with his effort in Crested Butte. After some talk between CBMST director Drew Cesati and Kai’s parents, Roger and Sue, they decided to give Nationals a try.
“We all agreed it would be a good experience for him,” says Cesati, “so we went out and got him a good pair of skis for the comp.”
The skiercross track is a step up from the one in Crested Butte and it took Sherman a couple of practice runs to get his skis under him.
“It was a little hair-raising at first for him,” says Cesati.
But once the competition started, Sherman dominated. After finishing second in the qualifier races, Sherman went on to win every heat to become the USASA National skiercross champion in his age group.
Cesati believes it was Sherman’s upper-body strength from Nordic skiing all winter that carried him to the title.
“He won it with his starts,” says Cesati. “He had a great pull out of the gate and his first couple of pushes gave him a good lead by the second feature of the course. He made it look pretty easy.”
Byron had a big weekend as well. After placing third at the Junior Freeskiing Nationals in Snowbird, Utah over the weekend, Byron hit the road to make it to Copper in time to compete in the skiercross ages 13-15 on Monday.
Despite missing a day of practice on the course with the other competitors, Byron found her groove throughout the day, letting her skiing do the talking to take second place.
“She was full-on deer in the headlights on her first run,” says Cesati. “She just skied really well, passing people midcourse.”
Four of the five CBMST snowboarders made it to Copper for the first time this year. Nevertheless, Conover thinks his athletes were ready thanks to their hometown practice venues.
“I think the pipe and boardercross we had here prepared us well,” says Conover. “They held their own with that extra bit of practices.”
It was Thomas Taaca’s third trip to Nationals. He and Isaac Nixon jumped into the event full-bore, competing in five events—slopestyle, halfpipe, boardercross, slalom and giant slalom—over five days.
Alex Wakenight competed in the 18-20 class in the halfpipe and slopestyle. Sarah Fruendt had her hands full in the Open Class slopestyle event.
“The Open Class attracts a legit field of competitors,” says CBMST snowboard coach Brett Conover. “You definitely have people showing up for the cash prizes.”
And Manny Ragin was the youngest CBMST snowboard athlete at Copper, competing in the slalom and boardercross.
While no one broke onto the podium when all was said and done, Conover had something more important in mind for his riders.
“We wanted to peak at that time and have them just do the best run of the year,” says Conover.
With that in mind, the trip to nationals was a success for the CBMST snowboard crew.
“I think everybody walked away psyched with their performances,” says Conover.