I find I have to make a big distinction between "Side cut turns" and "Balance turns" with kids I am coaching. The reason, they come with no idea of how of balance on a ski throughout the whole turn.
The sad thing is they ski mostly on slalom skis, incorrectly! And their home coaches don't understand the difference either.
A side cut turn is just leaning on the edges and waiting for the side cut to engage, then stepping off it. This involves no completion to the arc against the falline or bending of the ski. Skiing at Copper and A-Basin the last 4 weeks, I watched teams from all over the country doing the same thing, side cut turns. Sasha Rearick rightly says in his presentations that we can't ski slalom in the US. He's right, of course I've been writing about it for years, he states many reasons, but the main reason is the coaches don't know how to coach a balanced turn. They let the kids just ski sloppy with rotation and leaning; just using the side cut of a slalom ski to make short useless arcs. This is a waste of a ski day and a lift ticket in my view. No slalom race course in the world allows you to ski it with side cut turns. This is the state of coaching in the US. I see this from some of the so called best programs in the country, like Stratton for example. Very poor free skiing and free skiing is a reflection of the coaching and the limitations that will show up as the competition gets tough.