The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Numbers up again
By Than Acuff
Once again, the numbers across the board from little rippers, the alpine racers, snowboarders and freeride competitors are up for the Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST). Last year they had 238 athletes registered in a variety of disciplines. This year they have 259 kids in the program.
“I think it’s a combination of factors,” says Mountain Sports Team manager Eddy Cohn. “For one, our incredible coaching staff. They consistently offer an amazing experience for every kid participating in the program, and as the kids enjoy their experience, they spread the word and more kids join. Another factor is simply the growth of the Gunnison Valley community in general. It’s really cool to see a bunch of kids that participated in the program when they were young, took a break, and are now back in the program.”
The programs themselves are far from stagnant as well with coaches developing new training for their athletes, especially among the snowboard ranks.
“The snowboard team will be competing in a unique schedule of events curated by head coach Andrew Arnold,” says Cohn.
“We definitely wanted to add more elements,” says Arnold. “We like snowboarders that ride a lot of disciplines and are well rounded.”
With that in mind Arnold and his fellow coaches who have continued their coaching certifications have athletes competing in freeride, freestyle and banked slalom events throughout the winter including hosting a Banked Slalom World Championships in March here in Crested Butte.
“We want to help riders develop skills in all arenas and all of the coaches are ‘certed’ up and super excited to travel,” says Arnold.
The CBMST snowboard program added in a video element as well last year and will continue that as the coaches and athletes will film and produce what they call CBMST wibisodes on YouTube.
“It’s just another element of the sport where you don’t need a contest,” says Arnold.
While the alpine race program has seen limited participants the past several years, this year the program has 17 athletes signed up to push the limits mixing technical and speed elements with newly hired head alpine race coach Kate Starrett at the helm. Starrett comes from a long history of racing and coaching from competing for the University of Utah, to coaching for the Aspen Valley Ski Club and other jobs in the ski industry. She and her family settled here in the area recently and she did some part time coaching with the CBMST last winter before taking over this year.
“The alpine race team is poised to have their best competition season in recent history,” says Cohn.
“I want to make sure racing still has a presence,” says Starrett. “It’s definitely fun to work with all of these awesome kids, get them skiing fast and make them good people.”
Starrett has kids racing from the u14 age class all the way up to the u18 ages with some training five days per week and others two to three days each week. They’ve already been on snow for training at Copper and Starrett has four u14 racers doing a speed camp in Aspen next week. She also has five 7 a.m. training sessions slated for this year.
“It’s the prettiest time of the day and my favorite time to be up there,” says Starrett. “We can let them ski fast and see what it feels like to ski fast.”
The athletes have a full slate of races in the Rocky Mountain Division series and one boy and one girl from the CBMST will qualify for the u14 championships at Winter Park in March.
As always, a solid pipeline is in place with 64 kids in the Junior Devo program and the Freeride team continues to be the bread and butter of the CBMST with 156 athletes on the Freeride Comp team and coaches from last year in place with several new ones returning as CBMST alumni.
“With a crew of local alumni including Marko Alling, Holden Bradford and former North American Champion, Brooks Hudson, and the return of Hans Von Briesen, we are ecstatic about the additions to the coaching staff this year,” says Cohn.
Last year, 17 CBMST athletes made it to the National Championships and with such a young team, several more could make it to the big show this year. The Freeride program will be competing in six National level events across Colorado, Wyoming, and Canada. They will also be competing in the regional events all over Colorado and New Mexico. With 19 regional competitions on the schedule, they are looking at a jam-packed competition season.
The CBMST started programs last week and will be on the hill training every week, all winter long until resort closing in April.
