Our new coach, Lauren Heckley is very enthusiastic about the school outreach program and really enjoying continuing the great work done by previous coaches.  She has had some great ideas about expanding the program; often children come once or twice per season to our program which means they do not progress to skate skiing - which of course many love. She feels it is important to give the children two lessons on classic skis to learn some basics and then they can try skate skiing if they wish. Children who come to 3 or 4 lessons are loving this!

Lessons one and two focus on technique, the coaches are now using a chart to keep track of each childs progress through the techniques - they all love to see how they are progressing and charts are always displayed in our warming hut.

Photo credit : Karen Redfern

In order to accomplish more visits per child Lauren has offered some great suggestions on how to get the schools to expand the program which we will be discussing and implementing next year.

Photo credit Karen Redfern

Lauren is also is very clear that the AltaGas Ski-at-School program is also​​​​​​ the age of children involved in our other club programs and so with a bit more of an introduction through school we could then see more children involved in the club. Our numbers in other programs are increasing slowly too, which is wonderful and longer school outreach often leads to more children interested in coming to try it out and maybe also try the other programs which can easily lead to a healthier population and more life long cross country skiers! 

Photo credit Karen Redfern

Thank you AltaGas - you are one of our cherished sponsors!  We so appreciate your help and could not run this program as well as we do without your help!

Article credit Katie Weir