Press Release: Welch Village Getting Serious about Ski Racing

The future is bright for ski racing at Welch Village thanks to the addition of new staff,  additional investments in the quality of coaching system, and the race slopes themselves.  Welch Village is already planning to modify their early season snowmaking efforts in order to target more of their powerful snowmaking capabilities towards steeper race type terrain.

Tammy Coyne, who has spent the last few seasons serving as assistant race director, is now the new race director at Welch Village.  Coyne brings extensive race management experience from her years spent in Michigan and at Buck Hill in MN.  She was the race director at Buck Hill for 10 seasons and brings valuable expertise and knowledge which will enable Welch Village to attract more racers and race events in the years to come.  Coyne is eager to build Welch Village's NASTAR program, adult race leagues, and High School Invitational race.

Brianna Berg is now Welch Village's new USSA Head Coach.  Berg spent one season racing USSA at Welch Village and 3 seasons at Afton Alps.  She was a FIS racer and participated in the 2003 J1/J2 Junior Olympics.  Berg raced in college for the Northern Michigan Ski Team in 2005 and 2006.  In 2005, she qualified for the USCSA individual nationals and in 2006 her team qualified for nationals as a team.   For the past 5 years, she has been the head coach of the Northfield High School Alpine Team.  Berg is now a full-time coach at Welch Village serving as head coach for the USSA team and the new Race Academy Program.

The new Welch Race Academy, a program under the new SkiLink Performance Center™, will make it's debut in 2014/15 and will introduce a new standard of race coaching in the region.  As a PMTS™ Racer Development licensed program, the Race Academy will aim to build  "World Cup" type ski movements in every athlete using movement based drills and skier alignment methods.  The program's goal is to use smaller coach to athlete ratios than typical race programs.   Coaches will mix free ski drills, gate section drills, full course sets, and time trials in order to maximizeresults for each athlete and provide more individual attention. The program will also incorporate a great deal of video analysis enabling coaches to focus on how each athlete's movements create speed and efficiency on race day.

Welch Village is hoping that mother nature helps this fall in enabling them to concentrate more snowmaking efforts towards getting race hills like Lookout and Dan's Dive open sooner than in year's past.  When cold temperatures arrive this fall, Welch Village's snowmaking crew will be ready.  In fact, for the first time in many years, a Thanksgiving Race Camp is planned for the weekend of Nov. 29-30. If weather permits, this will allow all Welch Village guests to enjoy steeper terrain as early as possible.

Registration for the D-team, USSA team, and the new Race Academy opens on October 1st.  Registration for all race programs can be done via the Online Store.