Few sports have enjoyed more prolific growth in the last two decades than freeskiing. Fueled by the efforts of pioneers such as the late Shane McConkey, the sport has evolved from an obscure pursuit by a handful of zanies into a mainstream industry all over the world.
A black sheep in the conventional alpine racing community, McConkey sought to bring validity — and the chance to earn a decent living — to the revolutionary style of skiing that he and others were just beginning to explore in the early ’90s. McConkey founded the International Freeskiers Association (IFSA) in 1996, which encompassed the big mountain discipline, as well as slopestyle, skier-cross, big air, and halfpipe, giving a much-needed voice and governing body to the freeski community.
The IFSA has since become the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association and is the organizing force behind the recent explosive growth in big mountain competitions. In 2014 the IFSA added a collegiate tour which provided a bridge between the junior (18 and under) and adult levels of competition. Skiers and boarders at Sierra Nevada College seized this new platform and formed a competitive big mountain team for the 2015/16 winter.
Growing the Snow Legacy
With just over a thousand combined undergraduate and graduate students at its Incline Village, Nev. campus, Sierra Nevada College is a small but important hub for academics and athletics in Tahoe. It currently offers a varsity sports program for male and female skiers and snowboarders in alpine racing, slopestyle, and halfpipe.
In August of 2015 the college got its first big mountain skiing and snowboarding team — the first in Tahoe and one of about twenty in the U.S. Named the SNC Freeride Club, it was the vision of 28-year-old president and founder Dave Wadleigh, who returned to school in the fall of 2014 for SNC’s entrepreneurship program.
“It’s been a pretty awesome show of interest so far. We have 48 confirmed members of the club right now, making us the largest organization at Sierra Nevada College,” said Wadleigh. SNC Freeride is technically a club, but functions as a team in the eyes of the IFSA, making it so athletes can compete on the Collegiate Series.
The tour consists of five stops for the 2015/16 season and SNC athletes will be attending the event at Aspen Highlands, Colo. in March, with plans to enter more competitions in coming seasons. Competitors simultaneously accrue points for the team score as wins go to schools, but competitors can also gain points individually on the two-star level for world rankings as part of the IFSA’s larger competition network.
The 32 skiers and 16 snowboarders in the club — who train mainly at Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows — are stoked to be a part of SNC’s new big mountain team for both the competition and the community.
“SNC Freeride is full of people who just love being on the mountain,” said Connor Ciccone, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in Psychology and Outdoor Adventure Leadership at SNC. “It’s great having a group of people who all want to spend as much time as possible out riding and skiing.”
Big Mountain on Campus
“There’s a massive interest in these events with juniors and professionals, but there hasn’t been anything bridging that gap on the collegiate level until last year,” Wadleigh said. The club is not an official varsity sport, though Wadleigh hopes to someday get there and make SNC the first college in America to offer scholarships for top big mountain athletes.
But a long road is ahead for this to happen. “We need to show the right people such as school administrators, the director of athletics, and possibly outside donors, that big mountain is a legitimate sport, has big participation numbers, and will draw in enough prospective student athletes,” Wadleigh said.
He realizes that the big mountain discipline is brand new compared to established racing and freestyle events, but believes the growing momentum will help to achieve his goals. “Big mountain skiing and snowboarding has grown exponentially over the last eight years, and I think that it’s going to explode on the college level very soon,” Wadleigh said.
Fun-Raising
The biggest obstacle facing SNC is funding. Though they can apply for financial support from the college’s student government association, they rely on individual fundraising for the vast majority of costs associated with traveling to competitions, lodging, lift tickets, and registering for events.
In the meantime, Wadleigh and his dedicated SNC staff and team of student volunteers are working with Diamond Peak to put on a rail jam fundraiser series called Face-Off Fridays with events on Feb. 26 and March 25, among other fundraisers.
These efforts add up to the goal of providing new avenues for the collegiate skier. “Aside from wanting to build a team that I can coach, I want to help create a legitimate path for junior athletes to follow,” Wadleigh said.
