The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“It’s a young team”
[ by Than Acuff ]
The Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) freeride program finally got to compete on their home mountain last weekend and produced numerous podium results among the younger ages as well as top 10 results among the older kids.
After a truncated competition season last year due to COVID, the CBMST opened the 2021-2022 season in full force with 200 kids from the younger development programs up through the high school age kids signed up for the freeride and alpine racing programs with numbers especially massive in the freeride program
“It’s as big as it’s ever been,” says freeride coach Mark Robbins who has been involved since the CBMST started in 2009. “In terms of the size of the program and the depth of the kids training it’s absolutely exploding.”
The team has been traveling throughout the West to compete on the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA) circuit with 80 CBMST athletes having competed in at least one IFSA event.
“Being back to a full schedule of events has been super fun paired with the best snow year we’ve had in a while,” says Robbins.
Robbins points out that a majority of the team’s competition effort has come from the younger athletes with the 15-18-year-old age group smaller than in past years.
“It’s a young team,” says Robbins.
“The core of the 15-18-year-old team just moved up from the 12-14 age group this year,” adds coach Grant Spear.
The CBMST talents were on display this past weekend starting with the u12 freeride competition on Thursday, March 10 in Hawk’s Nest. In the end, CBMST, and a couple of local independent athletes, took seven of the 11 podium spots up for grabs between the snowboarding and skiing competitions.
The 12-14-year-olds then took over Hawk’s Nest on Friday, March 11 and while surface conditions remained great for the intrepid athletes, the occasional squall did wreak havoc throughout the day. In the end it was a podium party for the CBMST athletes winning the girls snowboard comp and pulling off a podium sweep in both the boys snowboard and boys skiing competitions.
“The 12-14-year-olds are the meat of our program right now,” says Robbins. “Half of them are moving up next year and they’re ready. The future is bright.”
The three-day IFSA regional competition then concluded with the 15-18-year-olds on the Headwall. After two days of snow and squalls, the older kids were treated to a blue sky and soft conditions making for an exciting day of high octane snowboarding and skiing.
“It was nice having Headwall as a venue,” says Spear. “There’s more freedom to choose their own lines.”
The CBMST had five athletes all competing in the boys ski event as well as local independent local skier Tor Hudson. Hudson had the top result among the local contingent mixing some technical aspects at the top of his Headwall run followed by stomping a big Cossack off of the Box Rock feature to finish the day in third place.
