CMC Racer Takes 3rd in Smartwool Ski Cup! and me the Gatekeeper
January 31, 2011
This past weekend was a gorgeous and event filled three days for the Steamboat area. The sun was permanently present up in the sky all weekend allowing perfect blue bird conditions for the Smartwool Ski Cup. The Cup was held at Steamboat Mountain Resort and Howelson Hill Ski Area for ski racers from all across the state to compete in. Although this was an open class tournament, College Ski Race teams from all across Colorado were present for the competition. Out of the dozens of colleges that showed up to compete, CMC’s ski team was one of the many colleges in the race this weekend and CMC performed very well. Having the home field advantage, CMC’s very own Brendan Rozell took 3rd place in GS out of 14o racers! Not only that, but another CMC racer, Eric Hicks placed 7th in SL out of 140 racers! Congratulations guys!!!
Although CMC did exceptionally well in the race, this story is also about me working as a Gatekeeper. A Gatekeeper is one of the most important entities of a ski race. The Gatekeeper is there to have a keen eye on the race, making sure every racer passes through all mandatory gates. Because CMC has all the hookups, any student who wanted a few extra bucks was given the opportunity to work as a Gatekeeper for USCSA. Any student from CMC was welcome to work because in the situation for gatekeeping, the more the merrier. More eyes = better judging results. I myself was one of many CMC students working the races as the very needed Gatekeeper and it was a blast.
I arrived at Steamboat Mtn Resorts at 7:30am to begin our briefing. They showed us how the rules work, how the charts needed to be filled out and which boxes to check. After receiving my judge vest, I grabbed my clipboard and hit the mountain to get ready for a long day of visual inspection. When I got to the race track, I was assigned to keep an eye on 4 of the middle gates on the course. I burrowed myself a nice comfy seat into the snow and sat there for the rest of the day watching skiiers fly past. Surprisingly, nobody missed their gates. There were a few that forgot to pass through a gate, but all of them hiked back up to get through the gate to avoid disqualification. It was a lot of fun participating in this job. I got to sit on the mountain, enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the spectacular view and get paid in the process. Overall it was a great time and I enjoyed it very much. A huge thank you goes to Lynda Pruitt (Coordinator of Student Life) and USCSA for giving me the opportunity to be part of this. Don’t forget to congratulate Brendan Rozell and Eric Hicks for their awesome placements in the Race!
