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USSA Spring Congress Notes
 These meetings are where the business of ski racing gets done...
USSA Congress Report
The 2007 USSA Spring Congress was held last weekend at the Deer Valley Resort in Utah. These meetings are where much of the “business of competitive skiing” gets done, including review of rules, qualifying criteria for major championships, reports from USSA and the US Ski Team on how they feel things are going, etc. etc. etc….
RMN was represented at the meetings this year by John Callahan (our new representative on the USSA Cross Country Committee, replacing Gary Giberson) as well as by Jason Cork and Travis Jones.
Full minutes of the meetings will be available soon on the USSA website, www.ussa.org, but in the meantime, here are a few highlights…
Presentations from the US Ski Team Staff:
Pete Vordenberg (Head USST XC Coach) reviewed the 2007-2008 season. The US scored a record number of World Cup points this season, and had 3 podium finishes by three different athltets (Andy Newell, Kikkan Randal and Torin Koos). It was a good season and show considerable improvement. We’re not there yet, but we are getting closer…
Matt Whitcomb (USST Continental Cup Team Coach) reviewed the CC Team’s season. They had some outstanding results, including a Europa Cup win by Tazlina Mannix. 3 Different CC Team Girls (Mannix, Liz Stephen and Morgan Arritola) skied to the top 15 in Europa Cup this winter and Mat Gelso won his leg of the Relay at World Juniors.
Matt Whitcomb also detailed the new USSA Coaches Education Plan. This plan will be rolled out in stages, with the first level, Level 100, making its debut this fall. After that, USSA will roll out Level 200 next summer, Level 300 the summer after that and finally Master Level at some point in the future. Each level will involve education in a variety of subjects from training planning to ski testing, nutrition to coaching ethics. Several coaches from around the US, including one or two from RMN will travel to Park City this fall in order to become certified Level 100 Instructors.
The USST Staff also reviewed its’ Elite Performance Model Tasks and identified which tasks had been completed, initiated and not completed. Major completed tasks included the completion of the first XC Specific CD in the USSA Coaching Library (see www.ussa.org), development of an in-season fitness testing plan, and provision of free health insurance for all USST athletes. There were 42 items on this list, of which 17 were completed over the past year. New items will be added for the next year, and non-completed items will re-assessed.
Also on the coaches’ education front, the National Coaches Conference is being planned again for this fall. The schedule looks a little different than 2 years ago in Lake Placid, with this year’s conference scheduled over a long weekend (possibly September 7-9). There is no set location as of yet, but there was a fair amount of talk about San Diego. The subject of the conference will be “From Adolescent Girls to Elite Women – Developing Successful Female Athletes”. If you are interested in attending this conference, contact Ivana Radlova at Ivana@rmnordic.org.
The US Ski Team will be hosting an ‘open’ camp in Park City this summer, from July 15th – 30th. This camp is open to Elite Athletes and their coaches. No athletes will be accepted without their coaches and the staff encouraged athletes who have skied on to an international team (J1 Series or World Juniors) and those who have had a JO Podium (top 3) to consider attending for a few days at some point during the camp. Steamboat will likely head over for a few days at the end of July – maybe the 27th-30th.
The USST will also host an open camp in Lake Placid in October. More details to come on this one.
There will be no NEG or National Elite Group Camp this summer, and athletes and coaches are instead encouraged to attend the Park City or Lake Placid camps mentioned above .
After years of confusion with the Special Olympics, the Junior Olympics will officially be renamed the Junior National Championships. This change will occur after this years’ event in Anchorage, Alaska as they have already made their logo and can’t change it now.
The 2009 Junior Nationals will be held in Truckee, CA pending approval of their bid and the 2010 Junior Nationals will be held in Presque Isle, Maine. The order of these two was switched from Maine in 09 and Cali in 10 because the Maine Winter Sports Center will be hosting a Biathlon World Cup during the JN week in 2009.
The 2012 Junior Nationals will return to the Mountain Region (that’s us, Intermountain and High Plains) and anyone who is interested in the possibility of hosting Junior Nationals should start thinking hard about it now. One thing to be aware of is that the current altitude limit for JN’s 2200 Meters. Sorry Leadville…
USSA is currently accepting bids for the 2009 and 2010 US National Championships. They are seeking a sea-level venue.
One item that everyone was excited about was the International Olympic Committee announcement that they will begin to organize “Youth Olympics”. The first of these games will be held in 2010 (summer) and the first winter games in 2012. These will be run in place of Junior World Championships every 4 years and will be much like the real Olympics, with the best juniors in the US qualifying to represent us there. The IOC estimates that about 1000 of the best young athletes in the world will compete in the Winter Games, which will come complete with an athletes’ village, tons of security, world-wide TV coverage, major sponsors… everything associated with the real games. If your community wants to host this one, beware, the IOC estimates the cost at $30 to 40 million. Because this event is still a few years off, next seasons’ second year J2s will be in there last year as junior racers at the 2012 Youth Olympics.
Next year at Junior National Championships, the Sprint Race will be included in the scoring of the Roger Weston Highschool Championship.
Next year at the Junior National Championships, Club Awards will be given for the first time. These award will be scored much like the JN Highschool Trophy or ‘Roger Weston Award’. There will be an overall award, one for girls and one for boys.
Starting with the 2008 Junior Nationals, the number of available coaches’ bibs will increase to 4 red and up to 11 blue.
Selection Criteria for U23 World Championships, Junior World Championships and J1 Scandinavian Series were reviewed and approved pending review of FIS Point averages at Junior World and U23 Championships.
U23 and Junior World Championships will be held in Poland this winter, while J1 Scandinavian Series will be held in Estonia. The USST is seeking coaches for both of these trips and a call for applications will go out in October. Both trips will take place in late January to early February.
Several World Cups will be held in Canada next January, and there was discussion about whether SuperTour Races should be held during these World Cups.
The 2007-2008 Draft National Schedule was discussed – some events of interest include:
Nov 23-24 SuperTour West Yellowstone, MT
Dec 8-9 SuperTour Bozeman, MT
Dec 15-16 SuperTour Soldier Hollow, UT
Jan 2-6 US Nationals Houghton, MI
Feb 7-9 Supertour Aspen, CO
Mar 5-8 NCAA Championships Bozeman, MT
Mar 10-15 Junior Nationals Anchorage, AK
Mar 15-23 Canadian Nationals Vancouver, BC
The complete schedule should be posted soon on ussa.org
There was discussion about creating a more effective pipeline for developing US ski technicians, as this is an area where the USST has had to look outside the US. Most of our wax techs are Norwegian.
There was considerable discussion of a proposal brought to the table by Dragan Danevski and Tim Weston, both or the BSF Team in Bozeman, MT regarding Junior National Team Selection. Their proposal suggested that JN teams should be allowed to bring a greater number of athletes to the championships if they had been successful at those championships in the two previous seasons. In the proposal, each division would be given a certain number of slots, say 30-35, and then would earn additional slots based on past results. The inspiration for the proposal was the observation that some divisions send 48 kids to JNs and never have an athlete finish in the bottom half of the field, while others bring 43 and only put a few athletes in to the top half of the field. The feeling of Danevski and Weston was that this proposal would create a stronger field at JNs. And reward successful programs and divisions. A working group was formed to further explore this proposal.
We hit golf balls at the driving range (not well), went for an uphill run (not well), Cal went for a bike ride (probably pretty well).
All told, a good and productive meeting.
Written By: ivana1Date Posted: 5/22/2007Number of Views: 614
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