Welcome to the Gravity Home page for the upcoming 2008-2009 season! This is where you can find the latest breaking news about everything that has to do with TEAM GRAVITY.
This Saturday March 7 will be the Team Gravity End of Season Race, Barbeque, and Awards Party Extravaganza!!
Saturday March 7 will be the Team Gravity Finale Race, Barbeque and Awards Party!
Schedule of Events
10:00 Meet as usual at the club house at the top of 7
10:15 – 11:45 Season Finale Home Race
Be sure to have your Nastar number memorized or on your helmet!
If you don’t have the sticker we gave you for the first race, you can get your number from www.nastar.com . Everyone is registered!
Ribbons will be awarded to top 10 boys and girls in each grade.
11:15 – 2:00 Fun Race/ Obstacle course on Comp Hill
Parents, kids and friends can race in this crazy kombi course.
11:30 -1:00 Barbeque lunch ($6.00)
(Burgers, Hot dogs, veggie burgers, chips, soda, cookies)
12:30 Race Awards – Bottom of Nastar
1:00 – 2:30 Free skiing and obstacle course
2:30 First Grade End of Season Awards
Presentations by Sheilagh, Rick, Jim, Tracy and John
3:00 Second Grade Awards
Presentations by Kathy, Chip, Patty and John
3:30 Third Grade Awards
Presentations by Cedric, Ken, Jessie, and Peter
4:00 PICK UP AT BOTTOM OF RACE HILL
Clean up and Head out ☺
This is our final Gravity event. It's been an incredible season! Thanks to all of the great families and athletes!!!
I look forward to seeing our Third Graders moving on to the team of their choice and all of the rest of our athletes coming back to Gravity for more fun next year!
We will need at least 10 Volunteers to help with the event
2 people – Set up and Grill - meet Rich Fake @ 10:00 at bottom of race hill to unload food, pull out tables, start grills.
2 people – collect money and organize food tables
2 people – serve food
2 people – bus tables and clean up
2 people timing and maintenance on obstacle course
2 people – extra help with what ever needs to be done ☺
The Vertical Contest was a big success for TSSC! Team Gravity led the way with best costumes and top fundraising efforts. Great job everyone!
It was great to see so many Gravity skiers up on the mountain over break! The snow was great even with the limited terrain and the park and box features made it fun for all! I hope everyone will have the opportunity to get out on the snow and make sure their ski/boot/binding system is working before our first day. If not, try everything on and ski around the living room for a while!
The coaches and I are reviewing the roster and forming initial groups to get us started skiing right away on Saturday. These groups are not permanent for the season!! We want to make sure every Gravity skier is in a group that moves at a comfortable but challenging pace and has a fun mix of old and potentially new friends.
Check our updated 2008-09 calendar for our schedule for the year and feel free to look through last years weekly updates and photo gallery to get an idea of what goes on through a typical season.
Here is the rest of our must know info. See you on the slopes this Saturday!
Meeting place: In front of the TSSC Club House at the top of Chair 7 (the Nature Center)
Start Time:9:50 AM(all groups will leave the meeting area promptly at 10:00)
Pick Up: Back at the TSSC Club House at 3:00 PM
Lunch:Groups will be eating at various restaurants around the mountain. Parents can link a credit card # to their children's passes to be used at any of the Telluride ski company restaurants (Crazy Elk, Gorrono, High Camp, Giuseppi's, Big Billies) You can set this up at the season
pass desk in Mountain Village. If you send money for lunch, I would send at least $10.00 to make sure they can get what they need.
Hopefully they'll come home with some change!
If you would like to send a lunch with your skier, please send it in a small backpack that will be easy for them to ski down to the bottom with. We will leave lunch packs in the club house and pick them up when we're ready to eat. Big clear name labels would be very helpful if coaches need to run in to get the packs for the kids. Thanks for your help with this! We've found that candy at lunch makes skiing in the afternoon less productive. If your skier wants to bring candy to share with the group, we will ask them to keep it in their pack until we
finish skiing at 3:00.
What to Have in your Pocket: A healthy snack that's easy to eat on the Lift.
An extra pack of hand warmers
A neck warmer (if it's not on)
A tip from coach Sheilagh Rouffa: If your neck gator doesn't fit in your pocket, stash it in your pant leg right above your boot!
How to Dress: Dress warmer than you think! It's much colder on the hill than it is in the parking lot.
Wear Warm gloves or Mittens. The warmer you are the more fun you'll have!
Before you come to practice: Eat a big healthy breakfast with protein! Try on your skis and boots. Make sure the boots fit in the bindings and that the DIN is set correctly for the new season.
Team Gravity is a fast paced fun program rooted in skiing all terrain and building skiing fundamentals. The philosophy of Team Gravity is to create a community of young athletes who love everything about skiing – the snow, the glide, the adventure, the camaraderie, the mountain, the weather. By basing our developmental program on having fun, being creative and teaching good fundamental skills, we hope to insure a healthy ski culture for all athletes and inspire some future top competitors. Our coaches are chosen for there strength in working with young athletes and for their infectious enthusiasm of winter sports.
All athletes will have the opportunity to participate in alpine races, mogul competitions and other special days filled with fun and games.
Technical Goals At the end of the program we hope that all kids have worked on the following technical focuses:
Balance: Kids should have a balanced stance over the middle of their foot with light pressure on the front of the boot. They should understand how skiing on the heel and the ball of the foot affects there turns and their body and know when to use these parts of the foot when necessary.
Ankle flexshould be consistently emphasized in every session. Skating on the way in to runs, uphill skating drills, flexing off of the side hill should always be encouraged. Skiing with straight, locked legs is a sign of fear or boots that are too big.
Parallel turnsshould develop spontaneously through fast skiing on easy terrain, skiing up and down side hills, and skiing in the forests. Games and drills should encourage physically matching the skis. The more fun and spontaneous this teaching is the more it will stay with the kids when they are free skiing.
Edging:Riding on a clean edge is one of the most exciting, fun feelings for kids and adults! Kids should learn to ride the edge, not push it away to slow down. Long runs on easy terrain are great for finding the edge.
Edge control and Rotary:Learning how to tip up the edge for carved turns and release the edge for short pivot turns is critical. In the moguls kids should learn to take off some edge and smear their turns. Too much edge in the moguls leads to defensive skiing and wedge turns. Traverses with edge release, hockey stops, and hockey slides are all fun exercises to develop edge control.
Teaching/Coaching Approach The teaching of Gravity groups should be a blend of coaching style and ski school style. This in essence is the key to the success of the program. The elementary school age kids are too young to have total freedom on the hill but experienced enough to not have to be controlled in a line all of the time. The kids have been in school all week and on Saturday they want to have lots of fun and learn in the process. Verbal explanations and slower technical drills should be short and to the point. Early in the lesson after a free ski warm up is usually when they are most receptive to technical discussion. After this they should have time to practice on their own, have adventures and play games with lots of individual feed back. At the end of a session the kid’s skiing should show that they have learned a lot. But in their mind they should think they have just been playing and having fun.
Terrain Kids should ski on terrain that promotes fast, in control, offensive skiing. The most detrimental thing to a child developing good fundamental skiing is to consistently take them on difficult terrain or put them in a group where they are always trying to catch up. Adventures in to steep terrain should be short and ego building not long and arduous. The terrain in Telluride is very suitable for these kinds of adventures. Many parts of steep runs can be accessed from roads that let you sneak out of the hardest parts of the run.
All of the coaches were so happy with their group’s progress. We’re all blown away by the level of skiing this year! I hope you all see it too!
Let me know if you can’t make it to the party on the 11th. I have trophies for all of the Gravity athletes so if you can’t make it to the party I will get the trophy to you some other way.
Thanks!
Melissa
Let me know if you can’t make it to the party on the 11th. I have trophies for all of the Gravity athletes so if you can’t make it to the party I will get the trophy to you some other way.
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