K-Squadron grabs Provincial Mogul Title

 The 2011 provincial Mogul titles hosted at Jasper on April 1st produced a roller coaster of emotions for all of the athletes, coaches and parents of NASA’s mogul club. The step up from the NASA mogul patch to an FIS homologated mogul site is huge. This site was the host of the Canadian Jr. Nationals last month and it presented a challenge in jumps, steepness and length that was just too much for some of our first season athletes.

 It was decided by the coaching staff to have some of the K-Squad athletes sit this one out. Georgia Woods whose combined alpine skills in K-2 and mogul experience put her in a position of skiing a top to bottom run with out blowing up. It was a big challenge for both coach and athlete to figure this course out and they did this with no time to spare. Georgia skied her final training run 10 minutes before the official start with a full two jump run top to bottom cleanly for the qualifying run. With a cut for finals we needed to put down a qualifier to place us in the top ten. Georgia’s qualifying run was clean enough to place her in 7^th place, so for finals we notched up the DD (degree of difficulty) for both jumps and turn up the speed dial.

Out of the gate for finals it was 7 turns to the first air…Cossack…land and into the long middle bump section leading into the final air. Twister-spread off the second air and a short 8 turn dash to the finish line. We improved our time by 3 seconds with no major breaks in turns. With the entire K-Squad team to give hi-fives to Georgia at the finish line it was once again another defining moment for us all.

This level of competition and the challenge of the course showed us all that this was no walk in the park, no casual ski through the NASA mogul patch. The final results would not be announced until the evenings banquet, but we knew that Georgia dug down deep mentally and physically to ski the best she had for finals. When results were announced for the 2011 Alberta Provincial mogul titles, Georgia was awarded the gold medal in her age group (12-13 year olds) with a comfortable points spread back to the second place finisher. Then for the overall awards for the day were handed out. These medals included all ages and Alberta team members; Georgia joined the older girls on the podium with the bronze medal. We celebrated her win with the entire Alberta freestyle family at the season rap up banquet Saturday evening.

All in all… it was another high mark to K-Squadrons first season. We will continue this direction throughout the summer with aerial training on the Red Deer water ramps along with dry land training. It is our intention to give every opportunity for all of our athletes to taste and appreciate both the excitement of moguls and competative skiing as a fantastic activity to participate in.

Thanks to all and we will see you at the Wearmouth Cup and K-Squadrons mogul event on Easter weekend.

Cheers,

Mike Haid & Preston Smith