Welch Village, MN

[pzotalis]

We were asked by several Tech Campers (Nov. 2012) to keep the forum updated on PMTS at Welch Village, MN. Welch Village began it's first season as a PMTS Direct Parallel Licensed Ski & Race Center the day after Thanksgiving. It's a tradition, that my grandfather Leigh Nelson, the president/owner of Welch Village takes the first run of the season on opening day. For the past 5 seasons, I have joined by grandfather to take the first run. Last season, we had four generations take the first run! Grandpa Leigh, my mom Paula, my then 5 year old daughter Camryn and I. This year it was grandpa, now 6-year old Camryn and I. On a narrow and icy beginner slope, Camryn followed me down the first run of the season. Halfway down, she wanted to stop so I could watch and see if she was tipping. She also wanted to me to watch her ski with "french fries" instead of a "pizza". Our first licensed PMTS season had officially started right there on the first run of the season!

For the past two weekends we have been training our ski instructors the PMTS Direct Parallel beginner sequence. This past weekend, training included shadowing and practicing teaching PMTS with real paying customers. Our staff is responding well to the training. A lot of them need some work on stepping, tipping, balance, counter-balance etc. We "fast-tracked" some of our more experienced instructors/trainers etc. by doing dry-land clinics in October and early on-snow clinics. Those folks are almost ready to teach full PMTS right now my themselves with one of our 4 green-accredited coaches shadowing them. Our people are going to get this...it's just a matter of time. But... they have to get it...we are all in! We threw away all of our blenders over the summer.

PMTS training for our large youth race development coaches begins this Friday and Saturday. Harald and Diana will be here to lead the training for close to 40 coaches. We had a meeting this weekend to start introducing what the training plan will be for the upcoming weekend and the season as a whole. I didn't know what to expect going into this meeting with seasoned race coaches. There was a overwhelmingly positive response. The coaches were excited and were asking all the right questions.

We have a lot of work to do this season. We are coaching PMTS across the board at Welch Village in all of our ski school and race programs starting now. We are training coaches right alongside D-team race athletes, USSA race athletes, beginner guests, intermediate guests, advanced guests etc. It's controlled PMTS chaos right now but it's great!

HH and Diana arrive this week and the next chapter begins...

[geoffda]

Thanks for the post Peter! Keep them coming. Can't wait to hear how your training sessions with HH and Diana go. I'm assuming you saw Irwin's posts about their session up in Whistler? Sounds like your coaches at Welch are similarly stoked. Hope it goes great for you guys!

[h.harb]

Bravo Peter, what a great legacy!

There are pockets in the world that are moving skiing and ski instruction forward. They include Welch village with Peter and his family, Whistler/Balackcomb, with Wendell Moore and company, and soon the Norwegian instructor association.. There are still many places that are stuck in old used up ideas that move nothing forward and keep the same people, instructors, coaches, kids, and guests in the dark. In addition, equipment selection, modification and enhancing, are still huge limiting factors in skier retention and development, but there is progress being made.

There are strong pockets of PMTS and supporting elements of PMTS information for skiing spreading, making a difference one skier at a time.

[Ihamilton]

Good luck Peter. It is a big thing you are doing, making the whole program change to pmts. clearly it is the right decision. A special good luck to Emma. I had the pleasure of skiing with her the last 2 days at Tcamp. With your program you will have some black level instructors in a few years. If you are surveying your clients I hope you post your results on how they view the change to pmts.

[BigE]

Incredible! And the Norwegians too, wow! This news has made my day.

Cheers!

[emakarios]

Last Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7-8, Harald and Diana were at our ski area training our developmental race program (D-Team) coaches. The program has 250 kids who train and race on 12 Saturdays or Sundays. Ages are 7-17. We have 50 coaches in the program. Many of the coaches have some background in racing either in high school, college, USSA or in a Nastar adult league. Some of the coaches also coach high school, are pace setters for Nastar leagues, etc. The problem over the years has been the lack of a consistent, high quality training program. The D-Team will officially be coached with PMTS: with HH and DR's help we developed a PMTS Standard with five levels, and exercises to train to each level. There were around 25 coaches each day, plus key people from the ski school. We were in two groups and it was fun to see the enthusiasm of the coaches as they learned to make PMTS movements in their own skiing.
Jim Peine and Ryan Nordel are in charge of technical training for the D-Team; both were at Tech Camp in Nov. preparing for this change over. Some of the racers have trained with HH at Welch for a few hours last year and last week; one of the racers was also at Tech Camp (Emma). We also have four green accredited instructors and another 3-4 instructors who have been studying PMTS and have trained for a few days with HH when he was at our area the last two seasons. Coaches training is on Wed. eve, instructor training is on Thurs eve. and D-Team kids can also train on Thurs eve. It's all about the Essentials. Messy? Intimidating? Sure, but as we are fond of saying now: "What is the alternative?" We are all in and here we go!

We have the same process going on on the instructor/skiing public side: around 70 instructors who teach 8,000 to 10,000 lessons. All of them being coached green progressions A-E over the last three weekends with the green accredited instructors as coaches. The four green coaches are also preparing for blue accreditation, which means we have lots of opportunities to coach instructors on their own skiing.
Because the decision was made to go "all in" with PMTS with these two programs, it is easy to feel overwhelmed with the task. The reality is that it is working and we will move quickly in our teaching/coaching abilities. The alternative of incremental change would have probably resulted in a lot of blending of PMTS into a traditional approach, which would not have worked. The approach of "all in" forces us to stay focused and move forward. This year will be good, next year will be better and on we go.
We have a green accreditation scheduled for late Feb. at our area; the discussion now is whether we can get enough PMTS examiners here to handle 18 instead of 12; both instructors and race coaches. That is a good problem to have!

[A.L.E]

Terrific stuff.

[emakarios]

Today I took out two PMTS "instructors in training" to teach 6 year old Camryn and 5 year old Anika. Camryn has been skiing for a couple of years and this was her second pmts lesson. she is learning to ski parallel and when she wedges, her mantra is "step and tip". Anika was on skis for the first time today and went through the A-C direct to parallel progression. At the beginning of the lesson, it was obvious that Anika was getting used to fore aft balance while moving around on skis for the first time, while Camryn was used to being on skis and could revert back to her stable wedge platform when her balance was challenged. What was interesting was to see what happened with Anika, who did not know how to make a wedge and was only trying to tip and step. At the end of the 1 1/2 hour lesson, Anika was making linked turns with a tip and step or tip and shuffle/slide, bringing her inside ski in closer in order to tip it and all the time working on balance. Even though she did "accidentally" make a wedge a couple of times, it was ignored and she was coached to tip and step/shuffle/slide. She did not revert to a wedge when her balance was challenged, because it was not a movement she had learned as a "go to" movement when challenged. Instead she knew she had to tip and step/shuffle/ slide across the hill to slow down.
None of this had anything to do with one skier being "better" than the other; my conclusion was that teaching young kids a wedge becomes a balance blocker and makes it more of a challenge for the young skier to learn balance. Camryn is becoming an excellent pmts skier with good coaching and practice, but she is having to work harder to learn the movements because she had a wedge to literally "fall back on". With the ski season underway, Welch instructors no longer teach the wedge and we will be teaching a lot of skiers who come to us in a wedge to ski with PMTS direct to parallel movements. My insight for the day was how great it is for new skiers to start out with the correct movements and not have to go through an unlearning process with the wedge.