The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Alpine, freeride and even some park programs in place
By Than Acuff
The Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) programs have been hitting it hard clicking into their skis and snowboards once the resort opened.
Last year they had 219 athletes and this year’s numbers jumped once again to 233 total athletes in the program with 130 in the freeride comp program, 18 in the alpine race program, 24 on the snowboard team and 61 Junior Devo athletes creating a solid pipeline to the competitive teams. And while there is the usual slate of programs offered, they’ve added something new to the CBMST agenda.
“New for this year we have a full calendar of park events as well,” says Mountain Sports team manager Eddy Cohn. “We will be competing in the Southwest Colorado region of the USASA series and hope to have a strong presence of athletes in Copper this spring for the Slopestyle National Championship.”
The event circuit for the competitive athletes is full with some already getting in their first comps of the season while others continue to prepare for upcoming events.
“The Alpine race team already competed in their first race of the year last weekend with some solid results from the team,” says Cohn. “The Freeride and Snowboard teams are still a few weeks out from their first events of the season. The Rocky Mountain Freeride Series (RMFS) has grown so much in the past handful of years and with that growth so has the competition schedule. We are sending athletes to five national level competitions and on top of a jam-packed national schedule we are supporting over 25 regional competitions and a full calendar of regional slopestyle events.”
None of this would be possible without coaches, and Cohn has much of his staff returning from last year including the head coaches of each facet of the CBMST program.
“I’m really excited about the coaching staff this year,” says Cohn. “The Freeride team is being run by Mark Robbins, the Alpine Team is under the expert guidance of Quin Glaess and the Snowboard program is headed up by Andrew Arnold.”
When it comes to the Freeride team specifically, Cohn and the coaches believe this should be another strong year at the regional and national level with 30 of their athletes registered for national level International Freeskiers & Snowboarders Association (IFSA) events.
“All of them have the skills and abilities to qualify for the Junior Freeride Championship if things go well,” says Cohn.
While the CBMST life can involve a lot of time on the road, CBMR has numerous events planned for right here in Crested Butte from junior freeride events to adult freeride events.
“We are hosting a junior regional competition, a junior national comp and an adult comp,” says Cohn. “The adult competition will be part of the FWQ Challenger series and we are super excited to see the future stars of the FWT competing here at Crested Butte.”
CBMR also is hosting a couple of alpine race events, one January 6–7 and a big one in March.
“We have an age class giant slalom race happening that I’m super excited for as it will give our Junior Devo athletes the opportunity to experience their first ski race for a lot of them,” says Cohn. “And we are hosting the Rocky/Central U16 showdown March 5 through 10.”
Information and a schedule of events can be found on the resort website, skicb.com.
