For the purely recreational skier, the winter sport season is already far in the rear-view mirror. For SVSEF Alpine Athletes, however, the season is only barely wrapping up; our athletes are only just beginning to experience pause enough to look back at last six months. Despite a competitive season characterized by cancellations, restricted travel, and unpredictable schedules, the Alpine program excelled this year, perhaps even more than seasons past. When winds of uncertainty get blowing, it pays well to focus on strengthening your roots; our traveling teams were asked to do just that, centering their programming on group progression and perfection of the fundamentals.

While this strategy ultimately tends to pay off in team culture and lifelong skiers, it also tends to yield competitive successes. SVSEF’s North Series team stands out as an example of the potential in focusing on group progression; not only were athletes on the whole finishing well, but they were in constant close competition with one another, no one athlete holding onto a ranking without challenge from multiple other sides. By the numbers, here’s an idea of just how well our athletes did:

SVSEF North Series athletes scored 40 spots in the top 5 and 22 podiums across 5 locations and 24 races. On average this season, our girls composed 36.7% of the top thirty, while our boys composed 34.9% of the top thirty. Of all SVSEF female athletes attending a given race, an average of 69.7% of finished in the top thirty; 70.6% of SVSEF male athletes attending finished in the top thirty. Of the athletes who attended the North Championships in Bogus Basin, SVSEF had six male podiums out of 12 opportunities, four female podiums out of 12 opportunities, and 17 top-five finishes out of 40 opportunities across both genders.

This trend continued at the U14 Intermountain Division level, with head coach Charlotte Gourlay explaining this of the season: “We had some major improvement from all the kids. Each athlete had a least one race run this season that was memorable and exciting!” For our U14 athletes, we had 33 top five finishes and 21 podiums across four locations and 20 races. Across half of the locations the overall male winners were SVSEF athletes, while female athletes made up three quarters of overall winners. On average, female SVSEF athletes made up 23% of top 30, while male athletes composed 10% of the top thirty. By the end of the season, seven athletes (3 female and 4 male) were invited to a special end of season Western Region project at Squaw Valley, focusing on skill development in GS and Super G.

Head coach of our Alpine USSA team, Nate Schwing, shared: “This season was a case study of what can happen without many conveniences we are used to; the focus was very much on the skiing and individual improvement.” The outcome was 27 podiums and 45 top-five finishes, across six locations and 38 races. SVSEF athletes composed a third of the top fifteen on average, scoring 116 spots in the top fifteen out of 570 opportunities. The team saw one full podium sweep and several near sweeps.

Finally, at the highest level, our FIS team collected 27 podiums, and approximately one win per every six races (for a total ten first-place finishes across three different athletes). Over the course of the season, SVSEF’s FIS team collected 53 top-ten finishes across seven athletes. Of our athletes that travelled to the cutthroat-competition zone of Europe, we received six top ten finishes and three podiums across two athletes, Ryder Sarchett and Dasha Romanov. In a final victory for our Alpine community, Sarchett, Romanov, Jack Smith, and Jesse Keefe were all named to the US Ski Team from SVSEF.

The Alpine X team—our skier cross team—while faced with limited competition opportunities, managed to score three third-place finishes, four fourth-place finishes, three fifth-place finishes, and one first-place finish.

Alpine Director Will Brandenburg concludes: “We focus on progression. These results make it very clear to me we did a fantastic job as a community in allowing opportunities for our athletes to progress. We experienced an enormous amount of success this race season in all of our age groups. The coaches did a phenomenal job, and we want to all thank the community for supporting our approach. This amount of success is a community effort and I can’t say thank you enough to everyone who supports our efforts to better ourselves and this program. The culture of this program is inspiring to be a part of as we continue to build on the foundation formed from past generations.”