Masters’ Academy
After the Mini-Academy, the Masters’ Academy began. This event is a big one. 5 days at Killington and only Level 3 certified members can ski in a Masters’ Academy group.
The snow. It rained over the weekend and that turned into some frozen conditions. This was challenging snow conditions and I, now realized, I need a better travel tuning set up.
My group was awesome! I can remember Sarah coming up to me and saying that she heard one of my podcasts and wanted to ski with me. Thank you, Sarah for breaking the ice! Literally and pun intended because we skied ice for the next 5 days!
Having 5 days to work on everyone’s skiing was so amazing. I found myself wanting to give more and more information, but that would overwhelm people so I kept holding back. Whenever I wanted to introduce something new, I would hold off and do 5 or more practice runs. The result - everyone stayed focused and got better. Otto, Jon, and Sarah were from Liberty which they found out would not open for Christmas due to warm temperatures and no snow. Brandon was from New Jersey. Bill was from Maine. Kimmy was from Pennsylvania.
What the PSIA-E does that I think is really cool is something called “ski” and “teaching” colleges. They train assessment candidates for days, intensively, before an assessment and then evaluate them at the end of the week. It was neat to watch.
There were so many highlights and jokes. This blog post won’t do it justice. Let’s just say that everyone in the group kept laughing and we kept talking about skiing. It was one of those, “you had to be there” to really experience it.
One highlight for me was to meet Mark Aiken, co-author and friend, of Teaching Children Snowsports. Mark and I never met due to the pandemic. However, we have spent hours and hours on the phone, text, zoom, etc. When I met him, he was taller than I thought he was going to be. He said he heard me when I walked in the room talking to Dusty and came right up to me. I was like who is this guy? He was wearing a mask so I couldn’t see his face and then I saw his eyes and knew it was Mark. Mark joined our group for 2 days. It. Was. Awesome. It was like meeting a pen pal. What many people don’t know about Mark is that he is a terrific interviewer. Every time we spoke about the children’s manual there were stories and recaps of our days. Mark on the east coast and me in mountain time. I think I kept Mark up late for more than a year just chatting on the phone! It was so cool to see Mark and meet him in person.
Ok. Back to our group. We had some fun times exploring Killington. Doing Superstar when you could see your reflection on the surface. Bill who is 84 years young would ski until we couldn’t ski no more. I hope I can ski just as well as he did when I reach that age.
On the final day, the team members working the event took one last lap. Michael Rogan and I switched skis. He wanted to see if anyone else was having trouble on the ice. His skis were definitely sharper than mine!
It was an amazing experience. A homecoming in a certain way. A reunion in others. I loved every minute of it.