Making The US Ski Team
Interested young athletes generally begin competing through one of 425 local U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association clubs located in communities around the country, generally at ski and snowboard resorts. Clubs provide introductory education and training, as well as competition programs.
Each U.S. Ski Team sport is also organized at a regional and divisional level, with slight variances by sport. Alpine skiing, for example, is organized in three regions: Eastern, Rocky/Central and Western. Within those regions are divisions including Northern, Eastern, Southern, Central, Rocky Mountain, Intermountain, Far West and Alaska. In some areas, such as New England, there are also state-based organizations.
Competition programs are held within each region or division leading up to national and international events. From these competitions, athletes earn points and are ranked nationally with the highest ranking athletes earning nominations to join the US national teams, which compete at the World Cup level.
The USSA is one of the only Olympic sports in America to support a full-time standing national team in every sport. Teams are nominated each spring or summer based on results. Teams for FIS World Championships (held every odd year) and Olympic Winter Games (held every four years) are selected by specific criteria and named for those individual events.
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—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one’s mind.”
—Barbara Pym (1913–1980)
“The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You don’t have to see where you’re going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if you’re lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.”
—Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)