Evening Activity: Swimming Hole and Skate Video

This evening the whole camp headed over to The Swimming Hole, a local indoor pool complete with diving board, basketball hoop, and water slide! The kids deserved some time in the water after a hot hike and some great effort in the field. We saw some big splashes, flips, and big smiles. There's no question that it was a time worth two thumbs up!

After swimming, everyone returned to watch video from Danny's skate session on Monday. They reviewed film of their athletic stances while skating as well as hopping over hurdles. Video has become an integral part of ski racing, and it was great to add it to the program this year at SDSC. As Danny emphasized with the kids, video is not a way for them to see how cool they look but rather as a tool to evaluate what they are doing well and what areas they can improve on. We look forward to seeing how everyone incorporates what they learned when we return to skates tomorrow and Thursday!

Afternoon HIKE!!!

We were looking for a worker... and we found it.  While the three older groups sent it for the annual trip up Mount Mansfield, our younger teams spent the afternoon in the Trapps trail system.


The view atop Mount Mansfield was as precious as ever, and members from all three teams (USA, Germany, and Sweden) reached the summit.  Across town at Trapps, all of Italy and Norway reached The Cabin near the top, and more than half pushed further and hit the Round Top trail that just edged over the peak.

Lots of fun today, and a ton of work.  We're looking for a great night of rest and getting ready for Brian McLaughlin USST to join us tomorrow to lead an agility session.

Instructional Session: Balance

This morning we woke to a bright sunny day with spirits flying high and lots of energy. The good weather couldn't have come at a better time as we began our first instructional session of the week. SDSC's curriculum progresses through four themes of functional athletic movements that apply to ski racing as well as many other sports. These B-A-S-E movements, as we call them, include Balance, Agility, Speed, and Explosion.

Today I had the privilege of running the balance session. I asked the camp to focus on working in controlled movements, and was extremely impressed with how well they brought both both effort and focus to the activities. In their teams, campers rotated through four balance stations that included hurdle jumps, dyna disc balancing, balance beams, and partner wheelbarrows.

In skiing and elsewhere, we almost always use balance in order to move our bodies from an unbalanced position to one in balance, and campers were challenged replicate that feeling in all stations this morning. Whether it was standing on tippie toes or doing single leg squats on a dyna disc, campers acutely felt the small stabilizing muscles in our ankles and knees that are crucial to balance, and worked to regain balance through tightening their core.

Great start to the day and we hope to bring our momentum into this afternoon's hike! We have miles to go before we sleep!

Evening Bike Ride

The rain cloud finally lifted, at least enough for us to get back outside and hit the bikes. 

The Stowe Recreation Path is over 11 miles long round trip, from the northern end closest to Mount Mansfield, all the way into town.  We access this path right across the road from the Round Hearth, and generally use it to access four different locations during camp: Cady Hill mountain biking trails, athletic fields for games, the river, and IC SCOOPS.  With the single treks unfortunately out of the picture for tonight due to conditions, we thought 2 out of 4 would suffice and we shot the path to the end for ice cream and hit the river for a swim on the way back. 

Tons of energy expelled, and more to come tomorrow!  We are in the field for Balance with Eric tomorrow morning before hitting the mountains for our most taxing event of the week... our hike day. 

Afternoon Adjusted

We had plans to head into the trail system at Cady Hill this afternoon, but the rain cloud that crowded over us at the end of our skate session decided to hang around for a few hours.  Instead, we switched our night activity of team building into the afternoon time slot.

With activities such as Alligator Swamp, the Human Knot, Tarp Flip, and Hula Hoop Challenge, our teams learned a little bit about teamwork and worked their way through each challenge.  A short yoga session relaxed the minds and kept the bodies limber, and finally a short session in the 15 person hot tub had the camp satisfied even without the challenges of the single trek.

This evening we'll head to the bikes in hopes of expending a little energy despite the fact that the Cady Hill trails will most likely be closed due to conditions.

SKATE SESSION #1

For any of you who have looked at the weather for Stowe this week... we have our work cut out for us to find gaps and breaks in the rain to get our sessions in.  This morning we awoke to wet pavement, but high hopes that everything would dry up enough for us to hit the skates and work on our athletic stances.  While the ground never quite dried, we found our way to the mountain and accomplished what we set out to do anyways. 

The camp started in sneakers, focusing on perfecting our stances, and we hopefully hit home the importance of having a solid, centralized stance.  An athletic stance is important in every sport, and specifically in skiing when we are flying through the transition ready to pressure into our next turn.  Being balanced at that point is critical, as it allows you earlier edge angle and the ability to press the hip forward at the top of the turn.  Being out of balance at that point often leads to delayed pressure, mistakes that require major recoveries, and too much lateral movement. 

Mastering Basic Athletic Stance is not something we can accomplish in one day, so we will return to this as the week goes on, but we put ourselves in a lot of different positions jumping and hopping to reinforce the ability to get in the correct position when you need to. 

Transitioning to skates, we did more of the same:  finding the balance point, solidifying a good stance, and working into hops.  Naturally kids need us to take it a step further, so we threw down bamboo poles (they wont roll as much as plastic gate shafts), and low and high hurdles to "elevate" the challenge. 

Most of the camp found a new level of challenge and a new level of accomplishment today.  We aim to keep that theme consistent for the entire week!

AND 2018, HERE WE GOOOO!!!

It is with great excitement that we kicked off the 2018 chapter of SDSC this afternoon.  We welcomed 51 campers to our host, the Round Hearth at Stowe, and started in with our activities.  An afternoon of orientation and settling in led to an evening of biking, swimming, and games.  The mountain bike obstacle course encouraged building on skills everyone will be putting into practice tomorrow afternoon on the Cady Hill Trails.  Despite the record low rainfall in Stowe this summer, camp still found its way into the river and our trusty cliff jump.

While campers made their way to Stowe this afternoon, coaches and counselors arrived last night to start staff orientation, including this mornings bike and field session in the rain.

Tomorrow we are excited to get on skates for the first time in the morning, and our hearts are truly hoping to find window in between afternoon rain showers to hit the bikes.