Date: 2nd of January 2008

Hi All,

Everyone woke up a little fresher this morning at 7:30am recovered from our New Years Eve celebrations and the new additions to the AWSC team adjusting to the time change.

The Boarders headed out today with a full team especially after yesterday’s lesson learnt about being on time. They did a few warm up runs on the front side, avoiding the park, so everyone could fine tune their free riding skills. Matesy got all the kids working on their backside 180's with everyone impressing with nice air time. Rowan worked on his switch riding on the flatter runs at the bottom of the hill; I think he even impressed himself.  After an hour of free riding everyone was itching for time in the park. Olly learnt how to backside board slide which he was nailing after a few attempts leaving him with a big smile on his face for the rest of the day and also earning him the Skullcandy daily award of a sweat band. Jamie learnt how to do front side board slides and was looking rather stylish while Kane and Jack were getting tech on the PVC pipe showing the benefits of the coaching they are getting here. In the afternoon, the park was getting set up for jumps that will be getting built towards the end of the week so everyone headed over for a few runs at Christmas bowl via the air site to check out the new Aerial site jumps that were looking very enticing.

The Freeride skiers headed out and did a quick warm up lap and stretch for kick start the morning session.  It was then off to park where the group played on all the features. They group split up with Nick, Conrad and Hamish skiing together working on some of the bigger boxes.  Hamish had a good morning working switch on to boxes as well as working on coming off them in control.  Nick was working on 270’s on and getting his rail feet back underneath himself.  Conrad stepped it up and was almost getting switch 270’s on the down box.  The other group; Amy, Lauren, Kate, Erica, Mike, Piers and Marnie started off on the little box working on the basics of learning to slide.  Amy and Lauren both had their best morning on the boxes so far this camp and both nailed the little box as well as the flat down box.  Marnie was right back into form having some awesome slides while Mike, Piers, Kate and Erica all had an excellent morning for their first time on boxes.  All of them did the little box and flat down without falling. Great achievement guys!

In the afternoon the free ride skiers headed straight over to the air site.  All the jumps had been ploughed by groomers this morning and were rebuilt.  The group spent the afternoon shovelling snow and setting up wood forms to form the small and medium size jumps.   Everyone pitched in with a good effort and both jumps had their basic shape.  The cat is back in tomorrow to form the third jump as well as finish the front of the other two.  With a bit more shaping tomorrow the aerial site will be up and running again and looking better than it has in years. When the group was done they all headed over to Silver Queen and played around with a couple of switch runs working on basic stance and getting some mileage for everyone.

The Moguls crew headed straight for the newly constructed skills course this morning with all athletes on snow on time. The first few runs served as a good warm up with all the athletes working hard to improve both their fundamentals and technique. The group has been working on a number of things in the past few days including; absorbing, extension, range, weight transfer, lead change and jumping. Today was a good opportunity to work on a number of these as conditions were certainly in the athletes favour. As the sun began to peak through Ridley worked hard to ensure Brighid, Kate and Airlie would have a smaller jump to train on. Alex W, Bryn, Brodie and Alex C were all working very hard on absorbing while Alex E forgot to bring his bumps skis out and struggled around for the morning.

In the afternoon the group headed straight back to the moguls course. Again, after slipping the course well this morning the group was able to begin skiing straight away. Both jumps and lines were open. The girls made some great improvements although must work hard on their fundamentals in the coming days. Alex E made some great improvements with his grossly high reaching pole plants while Bryn and Brodie continued to work on their range. Kate, Brighid and Airlie all hit the small jump a number of times and will continue to improve in the coming days. The group headed in 20 minutes early for some thorough video analysis. Tomorrow the crew will head for the bumps in the morning followed by a small session on the reconstructed air site in the afternoon. 

The alpine snowboarder group headed out for their first gate training morning. They set up a course on ‘Big Dipper’ and used the morning session to utilise the excellent snow conditions. Ash and Julia continued working on specific training while Chrisy got used to her new hired gear after the Air Canada sent her ski bag back to Australia. Ash went for a small hike while taking down the course when she rode off with the rope in her hands. While Ash was hiking a man picked up her board (thinking it was lost) and started skiing of with it. Luckily Phil stopped him before he took it all the way to the bottom.

After lunch the alpine snowboarder crew headed out looking for boardercross tracks hidden in amongst the trees. These tracks are left over from mountain biking tracks formed in the summer and have left smooth corners, burms and rollers to ride through the trees. The group finished off the day looking for big rollers to get air off of.

Lunch today was nachos, sandwich buffet and minestrone soup and dinner with tacos and Burritos for dinner – a real Mexican fiesta!

In the afternoon Chris took a shuttle down to Vernon for a trip to the local mall where the kids stocked up on lollies and entertained themselves before dinner.

The activity tonight was swimming down town at the Vernon Recreation Centre with Beggsy, Matesy & Chris heading down with the kids for some hot tubs, lap swimming, diving boards & slides.

Pinky today goes to Jordan Cozzella who, when walking back to the hostel with his take away hot chocolate, slipped and landed face first into his hot chocolate causing it to explode all over his face and his body, little sticky!!!

We have to give a special rock star mention to Conrad Lucas for making the front page of the local paper from last week’s rail jam. We’ll scan it and load it onto the site tomorrow.

That’s all for today,

Stowie

PS: Happy birthday Pez