by SODST Head Coach, Jacques Reid…

AUGUST 14th, 2019 (EL COLORADO, CHILE) –– Day 1 of our Chile camp is now officially in the books with the team on snow yesterday for the first time. After a very long travel day and a half, we finally arrived at the resort of El Colorado. Loading and unloading the equipment truck from the airport was a chore but that’s how it goes for ski camp life with a group of at least 20 people. Taking skis to the ski room and then other items to the rooms was also an ordeal as our rooms are a bit spread out in the two towers of the “Monte Blanco” and on multiple floors with a tiny elevator servicing each of the towers.

The condos are nice but space is fairly tight within each unit. Learning to respect each other’s space will be a key aspect for this group to have a successful camp. There is also lots of common space at the base of both towers where we do our meetings and such. A short walk from the Monteblanco is the ski resort base lodge where we are doing our 3 meals per day and where we get on the lift to access the training hills.

Today we focused on technical free skiing with an emphasis on achieving a good “Atheltic Ready Position” on our skis. Most of the day was devoted to doing drills on very moderate terrain where the athletes had a chance to find their touch on snow and pick up where they left off from last season. After lunch, we ventured further up the mountain for some more free skiing but less technical in nature.

At 2:30 pm we called it a day and gave the athletes a chance to relax a bit before a 3:30 run and dynamic stretching session.  From there the Kinesiology students met with Melissa (Kin. teacher from Vanier High School/Collingwood) at 4:30 while others got started on their ski tuning. 6:00 pm came fast and our 2nd dinner at El Colorado treated us to a magnificent moonrise over the mountain!

The food has been ample and given the athletes some good options on what to eat. While not your typical North American food, it is quite tasty and does require a bit of getting used to.

7:30 was our daily team meeting where we recapped the day and previewed tomorrow. A bit more ski tuning and getting ready for bed was the next step. 9 PM lights out is our curfew for now as breakfast in the morning will be at 6:30 and we will be on snow by 7:30.

Tomorrow, we will set an SL drill course that we will train in from 8:30 till 11 AM. An early lunch followed by an afternoon of freeskiing will complete the day.

Stay tuned to more photos and updates @sodskiteam on Instagram while we continue to build this new team both on and off-snow.

Cheers! ~ Jacques