The University of Alberta Ski Team, coached by Mark Stein and Herb
Stark, is a group made up of skiers of various skill levels from
intermediate to racer, who get together to train, ski, party, race, go
on trips and generally have a good time. The goal of the team is to
provide an environment in which skiers of all levels can improve their
skiing and enjoy doing it. Although we train slalom and GS, the focus
is not on racing; we believe that by learning to ski technically
through racing-style training, you can improve your skiing all over
the mountain, enabling you to tackle harder terrain and make more runs
during the day.
From the time school starts to the time snow falls, we do dryland
training outside on Monday and Wednesday at 5PM. We meet
at the doors to the Van Vliet Centre that are accross from SUB and our
coaches lead us through a program strength, agility, balance and
endurance training. Dryland is usually followed by a trip to the
Windsor to exercise our pizza-eating and beer-drinking muscles.
Once the snow flies, we meet for training Wednesday nights at
6:30PM at the Edmonton Ski Club (by the Muttart Conservatory in
Downtown Edmonton). We do some technical free skiing at the beginning
of the year just to get the feeling back, but pretty soon we move into
some gate-bashing slalom and the occaisional night of five-gate GS.
Training is always followed by wings-and-beer exercises.
We organize various trips to the mountains throughout the year
for those interested. Typically, we have two week-long coached
training/free-skiing camps (one at Christmas time and one at reading
week) as well as assorted uncoached free-skiing trips throughout the
winter. Getting involved with the team is a great opportunity to
meet other skiers who love the sport and ski at a high level.