Ski Coach – Elm Creek Park Reserve
[Three Rivers Park District]

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
To provide District-wide Nordic ski or Alpine ski/snowboard instruction to the public in accordance with established standards by the Professional Ski Instructors of America and Three Rivers Park District in a manner that provides park guests with the highest quality service possible.

• Conducts coaching sessions in accordance with established practice plans and recognized coaching methods and techniques.
• When directed, develops coaching/practice plans in accordance with recognized and established standards.
• Courteously greets park guests and ensures that questions are properly answered or referred.
• Helps maintain racing facility by performing a variety of general maintenance and stocking of supplies and equipment.

Qualifications: Minimum 16 years of age. Ability to ski or snowboard at an intermediate level or higher.

Compensation: $9.50-$16.96/ hour, depending on qualifications and experience.

Position Dates: December 10- March 4

All Elm Creek employees receive a FREE Unlimited Ski Pass. Ski or snowboard anytime during the entire 2017-18 season at no cost!

Visit our website to apply today!

https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/threeriverspd

Head Alpine Coach – Bloomington Jefferson

Season Dates: Mid November to Mid February

Practices – Monday-Friday

Job Duties and Responsibilities:
General Duties:
1.       Has knowledge of and background in the assigned sport.
2.       Strong communication and interpersonal skills as applied to interaction with coworkers, supervisor, parents, community members, and students.
3.       Responsible for all matters pertaining to the organization and administration of coaching an athletic team.
4.       Understanding of and agreement with the Bloomington Public School District’s Student Activity and Athletic Code and the Coaches/Advisors Handbook.
5.       Plan, accompany, and supervise the team to and from all events including practices and competitions.
6.       Enforce discipline and sportsmanlike behavior at all times and establish activity penalties for breach of such standards by individual students.
7.       Enforce all rules of the Minnesota State High School League and Bloomington Public Schools as they pertain to the respective sport.
8.       Perform other duties of a similar nature or level.
Specific Duties:
1.  Work as the head coach for the alpine ski team; qualified candidates are preferred to have prior coaching experience as an alpine ski coach
2. Must has or be willing to obtain credentials to serve as a high school head coach in Minnesota as mandated by Minnesota statute 122A.33

For more info contact:  Coach Virg –  612-799-5455 (Cell)  VirgSenescall@gmail.com

Compensation:
Seasonal stipend

Application Procedure:
Please complete the online application.

Current Employees:
Please complete the online application.

Head Alpine Ski Coach
Chanhassen/Chaska High School

For specific information contact Jon Sumer @ summerj@district112.org

Position Start Date:  November 13, 2017
Salary:  Based on CEA Master Agreement

Duties/Qualifications:

• Provide overall leadership and coaching supervision for the Chaska/Chanhassen Alpine Ski program, consistent with District Mission & Athletics Vision.
• Alpine ski knowledge/experience
• Good communication skills
• Respect/recognition of youth needs
• Minnesota Head Coaching certification/license or willing to obtain

Background check will be conducted.

If recommended for employment, applicant will provide proof of legal right to work in the United States if required.

Application Procedure:  Please apply online at:  http://www.district112.org  (only online applications will be accepted).

*BONUS LEAGUES

Each participant gets to take extra runs (3 or 4 total) in the race.  Only the best time in each run will be used to determine handicaps.  The following are considered bonus leagues for the 2025-26 season*:  Buck Hill Sunday PM (4 RUNS TOTAL),  Buck Hill Monday (3 RUNS TOTAL), Buck Hill Wednesday DAY (4 RUNS TOTAL)  * May Change back to a “normal” league if the league gets too big.

Join the New Buck Hill Foundation for an “Olympic” Event

Friday, August 25, 2017
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (CDT)

Buck Hill Ski Area

Buck Hill Event Center
15400 Buck Hill Road
Burnsville, MN 55306

The evening will include social hour, dinner, and a special award for our longtime coach, Erich Sailer. Special guest, Buck Hill Alum, and Olympic Gold medalist Lindsey Vonn will attend, discuss her storied career and present Erich with his award.The BHF is a NEW non-profit organization to foster passion and lifelong love of sport through active outdoor lifestyles striving for personal character development, positive sportsmanship and individual growth. A special emphasis will initially be in creating opportunities for young racers.

T-SHIRTS

Only Men’s size T-shirts will be available.  After trying to provide women’s sizing to our participants in the past, we have found that ladies’ T-shirts vary a lot in sizing from year to year making it difficult for members to get the proper size.

We will be sticking with the same style of men’s T-shirt we got last year.  To see brand specifics, you can CLICK HERE.

Dirtbag Invitational Golf Tournament Benefit

Congratulations to Chris Jacobson for winning the $50 off of a Ski Challenge membership in the survey drawing.  Chris races with the “DTwSP” team on Monday nights at Buck Hill.

Thanks to everyone who took the survey.  It helps out a bunch!

THE SKI CHALLENGE is a recreational alpine ski racing league at Buck Hill and Wild Mountain.  The Ski Challenge provides an atmosphere which caters to all levels of skill and competitiveness from the beginner to the veteran racer.  Adults, kids and families can participate.  There are many first time racers as well as past, or current, USSA, High School, and Collegiate racers participating.  The unique team format and scoring system promote great camaraderie and interaction among racers.

The Ski Challenge began in 1985 as a Twin Cities Metro Area recreational ski racing program founded by Patricia Lecy.  Patricia enjoyed racing through NASTAR courses and thought it would be fun to turn a simple NASTAR type of race into a grand, team event.  She kicked off her idea with the “Media Challenge”.  The idea was to get reporters, weather people, and other media celebrities outside in the winter participating in a ski racing.  Patricia thought that if the media was engaged and interested in an outdoor, winter activity, they would be more apt to promote winter weather in a positive light instead of scaring people to hole up inside for half the year.  This would be a good thing for all the participating ski areas and ski shops by encouraging more people to get outside during the long, cold Minnesota winters.

The Media Challenge was so much fun that Patricia thought it would be a great idea to invite the general public to join in.  Thus the Twin Cities Ski Challenge was born.  The program began with four teams (approximately 35 people) roving each week to different ski areas.  After a couple years the program began to grow and Patricia decided to keep each league at its own venue.  In time Buck Hill, Afton Alps, Hyland Hills, Trollhaugen, and Welch Village were involved with the Twin Cities Ski Challenge.  As the years went on, the Challenge grew and grew.

In 1988 Patricia and her business partner at the time decided to split the Twin Cities Ski Challenge into two groups.  Patricia kept leagues at Buck Hill and Hyland Hills and added Powder Ridge to the list.  She also changed the name to “The Ski Challenge”.  After a few years, Patricia added Wild Mountain to the race venue choices.

After 12 years Patricia grew the Ski Challenge to close to 1,200 registered racers.  There were 12 leagues at four ski areas that included a total of 112 teams.  There were seven leagues at Buck Hill with 62 total teams.  Hyland Hills hosted two leagues with 20 total teams, Powder Ridge had one league with nine teams, and Wild Mountain had two leagues with 21 Teams.  In 1997, Dave and Barb Everson purchased The Ski Challenge from Patricia and Roger Lecy who retired to Tucson for the winters.  Sadly, Patricia Lecy passed away in 2006 from Cancer.

Buck Hill has the largest number of Ski Challenge leagues.  Prior to 2000, the facilities and timing capabilities at Buck Hill only allowed 10 teams per league.  In 2000, Buck Hill opened a new facility, Buckstone Lodge and upgraded their timing system.  Buck Hill and The Ski Challenge worked together to make races run efficiently and smoothly.  These improvements gave The Ski Challenge the opportunity to add more teams to each league and increase the maximum to 16 teams per league with a potential of 160 racers per league.

Ski Challenge has evolved into one of the finest and largest team-oriented recreational race leagues in the country allowing adults, kids, and families to participate.  Ski Challenge is ranked as NASTAR’s number one race club in the country nearly every year and Buck Hill is oftentimes the number one NASTAR resort.  Today, close to 1,500 racers of all ages register for Ski Challenge each year. There are 103 regular season teams at Buck Hill and 29 at Wild Mountain.   Ski Challenge’s size and long time commitment to its members are testimony to the exciting racing and quality experience that it provides.

Fill out a survey for a chance to win $50 off of one league fee for the 2018 season!

Our 2017 Survey is now available and will be open through Sunday, April 23.  Your feedback is appreciated and will be used for our demographics packets we create for our sponsors and participating ski areas.

We had another successful Championships Weekend at Giants Ridge March 3-5.  The weather was fabulous and the conditions were awesome!  We had a total of 603 racer starts during the three days.  The Ski Challenge OPEN Team Race was held on Friday.  Divisional Team Racing was held on Saturday and Sunday.  And, the new “King of the Hel” race was held on Saturday afternoon.  Scroll down to see more about each race.

Ski Challenge Friday OPEN Team Race on Innsbruck

“NoWax” team was the winner out of 18 teams again for the third year in a row!  The team included Mark Cater, Bill Christopherson, Jukka Mahonen, Doug Nordmeyer, Terry Lutz, and Pat Hiller.  We had 101 participants in the race.  An awards ceremony was held Friday night at the new chalet next to the Burnt Onion Bar.

To see all results click here:

• OVERALL RESULTS
• TEAM RESULTS

TEAM RACING

Team racing took place on Saturday and Sunday of the Championships Weekend.  Divisions 1, 3 and 5 were on Saturday and Divisions 2, 4, and 6 were on Sunday.

Winning Teams: ALL RESULTS

Division 1:

1. RE/WAX – Buck Hill Wednesday DAY
2. Bud Bunch – Wild Mountain Sunday DAY
3. Premature Release- Buck Hill Thursday

Division 2:

1. Team Brew Ski –  Buck Hill Thursday
2. RUdoneW/that? – Buck Hill Friday
3. The Young & Edgeless – Buck Hill Sunday AM

Division 3:

1. Tasmanian Snow Devils – Buck Hill Sunday PM
2. GoPro – Buck Hill Saturday
3. Sunday Screamers – Buck Hill Sunday AM

Division 4:

1.  Buhler Blizzard – Buck Hill Sunday AM
2. Parabolic Furs – Buck Hill Sunday PM
3. Buck Naked – Buck Hill Wednesday DAY

Division 5:

1. The Rookies – Buck Hill Thursday
2. Drunkin Skidiots – Buck Hill Tuesday
3. Special Ed Racing – Wild Mountain Wednesday

Division 6

1. The Cruzin Wild Bunch – Wild Mountain Sunday DAY
2. Flat Tire – Buck Hill Monday
3. Bucket Boys – Buck Hill Sunday PM

To see all results CLICK HERE

KING OF THE HEL RACE

This was the first time for the King of the Hel race held on Saturday on Helsinki.  This race was open to all Ski Challenge members and non Ski Challenge members.  If you were a Ski Challenge member, we took your “rated Handicap” going into the race and compared what your earned handicap was in the race.  We then determined a % improvement (or un-improvement).  We crowned a King and a Queen of the Hel based on the best % of improvement.  We also gave prizes to the fastest racer in various age groups.

An awards ceremony was held on Saturday night in the new Chalet next to the Burnt Onion Bar.  Gina Tester was crowned Queen of the Hel.  Eddie Overholt was crowned King.  To see all the results for this race follow these links:

• OVERALL RESULTS
• AGE GROUP RESULTS

King of the Hel – 2017

This was a fun race that gave racers who enjoy racing on Helsinki a chance race on that run.  We had about 25 people pre-registered for this event.  We ended up with 84 participants.  It was an open running order allowing participants to run when they wanted.  We did not anticipate that this race would be so popular.  We plan on having a King of the Hel next year, but will probably go to a set running order based on when you sign up for the race.

PHOTOS

To see photos from the weekend you can find links on our website here:  PHOTOS.  Or you can find the photos on our facebook page here:  PHOTOS

Thanks for  the good season!?  Well, thanks for participating in the season!  It was a tough end to our regular season league racing.  With the warm temperatures in February spilling into March, it meant an entire week (much of our week 7) had to be postponed.  We were able to get all of our Wild Mountain races in.  We tried to make up our Buck Hill leagues that were postponed.  We got most of them in except our Monday, Thursday and Friday leagues.  Due to some thin snow coverage, a few turned up rocks, and the lack of cold temperatures, Buck Hill just couldn’t get enough coverage back up at the top of our race run to hold those make up races.

Black Diamond was kind enough to let us have an awards ceremony for each league last week. Fun was had by those who attended with door prize games and awards.

Buck Hill Monday Night Fun!

2016-17 By the Numbers

For the 2016 Preseason season we ended up with 302 racers starts.  This is a 23% decrease from 2016.  Unfortunately, with the slow start to winter, our first week of racing had to be postponed.  Buck Hill Friday was combined with Buck Hill Tuesday.  We were able to get all three weeks of Wild Mountain racing in, but had to get our three week league series crammed into two weeks at Buck Hill.  Buck does not allow racing during the Holiday Break so we just didn’t have enough time for three weeks.  Look for some new ideas for preseason next year.  We are going to attempt to offer more gate training and open races during the December preseason time.

The total number of racer starts for our regular, seven week league series was 6,540.  This was an 11% decrease from 2016.  We will chalk this one up to weather once again.  2017 was the first time in Ski Challenge’s 30 year history that we were not able to complete our seven week league series for three of our 14 leagues.  That decrease probably would be close to non existent if we did not have such a warm February and March.

We appreciate the patience and understanding that our racers have shown during this tough season.  Here’s to hoping for a normal winter next year!