NEW and exciting SSC race training programme
After 9 years of sterling service as coaches of the Scottish Ski Club race training programme, Craig Lamont and Gary Todd have decided to step down. They rescued the club at a time when training numbers were low and the success of their athletes at both national and international level speaks for itself. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to them and their team for all they have contributed to the club over the years and we wish them well as they get more time to themselves in the mountains.
The development of UK alpine academies with full time coaches and a more comprehensive coaching programme has highlighted specifically the lack of continuity between the alpine camps that our athletes are involved in, and our domestic programme. It has become clear that in order to provide a high quality coaching programme that we can no longer afford to exist on a shoestring budget andmust aim either to supplement our programme with external funding or increase the cost to parents.
We are therefore delighted to be able to announce that SSC has secured the services of Sean Langmuir and his Alpine Training Centre to provide both a domestic and alpine training programme for our young aspiring ski racers. Sean, as a long-time SSC member, will be familiar to many of you and both he and head coach Ali Kuwall work full time on the planning and delivery of high quality alpine ski coaching.
Our vision is a joint venture combining the history and infrastructure of the SSC and the professionalism and expertise of ATC to create a Scottish based domestic and Alpine programme to rival the UK alpine based ski academies, but at significantly less cost. Our aim is to create a peer group of young ski racers of a size and quality that has not been seen in Scotland for decades.
We are aiming to focus initially on Cairngorm. The programme is centred around the 10 weekends over the winter period from January to March. The main changes that parents will recognise is that training commitment is slightly increased and that training will occur whatever the weather – wherever possible on snow, but on dryland if all the ski areas are stormbound. Also included are mid-week access to dryland sessions organised locally as well as Braehead for snow training on a Tuesday night.
It is anticipated that our young ski racers will be involved in Sean’s Scottish and alpine based camps with ATC using if not the same coaches, then at least coaches working under to the same structure and standards. Sean has also committed to the mentoring and training of our own young club coaches.
The club would like to propose the following fee structure. This maintains a £15 a day rate for those fully committed to the programme, but asks for a modest increase in contribution from those looking for fewer days of coaching over the winter. These fees would cover the weekend programme only with additional fees for any week long Scottish or alpine ATC camps.
The 10 and 20 day options would need to be confirmed by the middle of December with single day options available up to the Wednesday before the weekend. Days in the 10 and 20 day packages would need to be specified ahead of time but could be part or all of a particular weekend.
20 day package: £300 (plus £15 per day for additional days)
10 day package: £200 (plus £20 per day for additional days)
Single day: £30
Athlete / coach ratios are set at this point at 10:1 but we are aiming for a better quality ratio of 6:1 as more funding becomes available.
We would also like to make the training available from age 6 to junior under 18. The child protection rules mandate a supervision rate of 6:1 for the U8s and we would be looking for voluntary parent helpers to support that end of the programme.
This is a really exciting time for the club and we hope that both you and all the families that you ski with can get behind this venture. We hope that the base of our pyramid of young ski racers will increase massively, that club membership will be boosted and that ultimately we will produce world class ski racers from this programme.
Details of how to sign up will be communicated by email to those on the previous year’s programme and will also be posted on the website in due course.
For further details of the programme click here