NASA Featured on "Alberta Alpine Exclusive"
Updated: April 12th, 2011
The Alberta Alpine Ski Association featured NASA in it's "AB Alpine Exclusive", a series of stories about ski racing in and around the province. John Korobanik, the feature reporter, interviewed our Program Directors and focused on the benefits of collaboration that have arisen in NASA's first two seasons.
AB Alpine Exclusive: Collaboration Among Clubs at Nakiska
John Korobanik
Edmonton
Say the acronym NASA and most people automatically think of the American space program that pioneered outer space exploration and put astronaut Neil Armstrong on the moon that July day in 1969.
Closer to home, here in Alberta the acronym stands for the Nakiska Alpine Ski Association, something of a pioneer itself in the advancement of alpine skiing.
The association was founded in 2009 when four Calgary-area ski racing clubs operating out of Nakiska – Skimeisters Alpine Racing Club, Paskapoo Alpine Racing Team, Kananaskis Alpine Ski Team and the National Alpine Training Centre – agreed to work together under one umbrella to improve ski racing in the province and to try to build Canada's best development program. After two winters the program, which added the K-Squad Mogul Institute in 2010, is demonstrating that working together for the common benefit of the athletes can be beneficial for everyone.
And they’re not alone. This winter the Calgary Alpine Racing Club and FAST, the former Fortress Alpine Ski Team, are also working together out of Nakiska.
“We can provide better quality programs by bringing our coaching staffs together to deliver a strong program for the children,” Brett Zagozewski, program and technical director for CARC, says of the co-operative venture. “The side benefits are financial benefits to pooling resources. And in terms of manpower, like with our summer camps we bring them together and instead of having one or two coaches organizing, you now have three or four.”
Scott Bailey, NASA co-program director responsible for the development level programs, said one of the biggest goals of the association “and we're already seeing this, is that we've able to be more athlete specific in the training. By having a larger group we can break programs into training groups that meet athletes needs more effectively
“We've definitely seen a lot of areas of success. We were able to grow our numbers ahead of what we would have been individually. We've quickly become the largest development system in the province.”
NASA now has more than 300 members. Along the way the clubs, which all maintained their own board of directors and coaching staffs, have all worked well together, each accepting its own area of responsibility.
“It just didn't make sense with all the clubs operating out of Nakiska, to be fighting over the same athletes and spreading out resources and trying to run quality programs at all different levels,” explains Scott Zahn, the other co-program director responsible for performance level programs. “So we brought the four alpine clubs together and said each club will be responsible strictly for one specific age group. That way they could all put their resources and all their energies into just that two-year age group.”
There wasn't much difficulty in sorting out the areas of responsibility. Skimeisters was a Nancy Greene only club so it continues running that program for children aged 5 to 10. A meeting with coaches and parents decided that Paskapoo would run the K1 program for skiers aged 11 and 12 and Kananaskis the K2 for racers ages 13 and 14. NATC continues to run its FIS series for ages 15 and up. The K-Squad operates the moguls program.
The two co-operative ventures and the progress they’ve made in terms of athlete development and eliminating costly duplication could well be the future of alpine racing programs.
“The reality is, if all the ski clubs in Alberta and Canada did more of this, where they work together and pool resources,” says Zagozewski, “it could be much more cost effective and offer much more diverse and better programs. It’s a win, win, win when we approach sport in this manner.”
Among the difficulties that the five NASA clubs had to overcome were getting the parents on board, finding a combined philosophy that satisfied all the individual clubs and creating an accounting system the clubs could all work with.
“It was trying to get everybody to switch from what they've been comfortable doing for the last 10, 20 years and into a modified one that works for everybody,” says Zahn. “We had a little bit of learning pains the first year, but this year has been very good.”
The merging eliminated a lot of unnecessary and costly duplication but Zahn says it's hard to put a figure on the cost savings because the funds were rolled back into improving the programs. The challenge now is to maintain a suitable balance between quality and quantity. Bailey says one area they'll be focusing on is coach development to ensure “we have strong coaches right from our introductory 13-week program all the way up to the FIS level. All the coaches need to be working on the same page and be 100 percent dedicated to developing their athletes.”
NASA has a good mix of young and senior coaches and Bailey says a focus will be making sure the veteran coaches continue to mentor the younger one.
The co-operative ventures are showing there is a better way to operate ski racing programs in Alberta and Canada. The club co-operation means there are resources dedicated to each level of development and NASA is in a position to hire the best coaches available
“We can get professional coaches working at the lower levels, working with our 12 and 13 year old athletes where those coaches would normally be working at the FIS level because that's where the year-round positions are.”
And that, he says, will lead to stronger racing programs that will raise the bar in the province and the country.
“The nine and 10 year olds will be the first ones moving through the system so we won't see the results probably until they're 16 or 17.”