From the Office

Greetings from the NRM Office!

A few quick updates:
- Now accepting applications for scholarships for events, please access the applications here, deadline for the round is December 15!
- Stay close to home and join us for one of the Regional Academies coming in January, February and April. Please note we are adding an Academy at Big Sky April 5 & 6, more info to follow.
- Keep an eye out in your inbox for the NRM Online Auction coming the 1st week of December.

Through the generosity of your fellow members who recognized that some of you may be suffering through reduced employment and other challenges during the pandemic, we have set up a fund to help you with your dues; please contact Herb for more information on how to apply for this assistance. If you are in a position to Give a Lift to a fellow member and make a donation to our Dues Scholarship fund, please contact Herb at hdavis@psia-nrm.org.

As you prepare for events, please know that your safety and health are our number one priority. Please review the current NRM Guidelines for COVID and we ask that you all take the “Wellness Check” before each day you join us on snow. Please, if you are sick or you are showing symptoms, stay home, or in your lodging. If you answer Yes to any of the questions please contact us ASAP. If you must cancel attending there are no penalties for cancelations.

Stay Safe, Be Well and Keep Sharing the Stoke!

The Rise of the Webinar

We’ve all been spending A LOT more time online since last spring when the ski season was interrupted. I think I speak for most of us when I say, though it is nice to see each other virtually and talk about snowsports, it is not even close to the feeling of sliding down a mountain with a group of your snowsports compatriots in tow. Thankfully, we’re all looking to get back on snow in the near future and get back out where we belong.

But being the eternal optimist, there is a bright side to this - it has made us rethink how we disperse information and work with other snowpros across the country. Cue the WEBINAR!!!

Since last spring, divisions across the organization have been putting on webinars for membership to keep the education and connection going even though gathering together as a group in person wasn’t possible. And though it’s no replacement for sliding on snow, it’s better than disconnecting altogether. In fact, it’s lead to the understanding that some things actually work very well online. Practicing your MA skills, getting in a workout with professional guidance, learning about Kinesthesiology, Biomechanics, Physics all in relation to how we move on snow, discussing people skills as well as practicing them, as well as many other topics can be done online. I’m not saying it’s more fun online that it would be in person, but sometimes things like timing, travel, and pandemics make an insurmountable barrier, and being able to be online helps remove those barriers.

One other perk to Webinars is that you're able to be instructed by Ed Staff and other experts across divisions (without the hassle of traveling) as well as make new connections with members from across the country. And did I mention you can get CEUs while doing all of this?

So if you haven’t had the chance or just don’t think it’s for you, I’m here to tell you that, while it’s no replacement for sliding on snow, there are a lot of other perks to the rise of the webinar. Don’t worry - we’re not going to become PSZA/AAZI (Professional Ski Zoomers of America/ American Association of Zoom Instructors); we will still be on snow because that’s what we all love to do (not stare at computer screens, forgetting to mute ourselves, and figure out how to add fun filters to our backgrounds). BUT before you knock the webinar, check one out and see what you think; it might just enhance your understanding for the next time you do get on snow!

* To see the options for webinars across the nation, check out the national webinar calendar.

Fall Conference Goes Online

In an effort to spread the information typically dispersed by the representatives at Fall Conference, the national task forces for each discipline developed a series of online webinar. These webinars were designed to get the information about the implementation of the New Standards for each discipline directly to all Ed Staff members in all divisions across the country.

The NRM Ed Staff has been diligently watching these webinars across the months of October and November to enable us all to not only get the information, but to get the NRM membership ready to be assessed using the new standards during this season and into the next.

The benefit of using an online platform to deliver this information is that everyone is hearing the exact same thing from the same people. This helps us all eliminate the interpretations that come from hearing the information even second hand. The set up of direct communication from the top directly to our Ed Staff should help make us all more consistent in our message, understanding, and hence education and evaluation of the membership at large.

Despite the fact that there are many downsides to the limitations that the pandemic has implored us all to make, this format of delivering training info to Education staff is, I believe, one upside. Having all Ed Staff nationwide getting the same info at the same time is a great way to improve our consistency not only within our own division but also across the country. I look forward to seeing the outcome of having our Ed Staff more tightly on the same page as the season begins!

Now it’s time to get on the SNOW!

Feeling the Snowboard Stoke

I hope this finds you all doing well, staying healthy and feeling the stoke for winter. The 2019/20 season came to an abrupt end; many events were cancelled as a result. We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to figure out how the 2020/21 season will work while keeping us all as safe as possible. This coming season will obviously be different for us. In-person events will meet and stay on snow; please dress warm and bring a facemask. In order to limit time indoors, we will do our preliminary and post meetings via emails and/or Zoom. NRM and National will offer educational webinars this season, look for these on the NRM Events Calendar and on the National website. We are also planning to travel to more NRM resorts for on-snow events this season.

When you take a look at the NRM Events Calendar, you’ll find dates and venues for certifications, preps, and other events. We are also willing to add webi-gnars and events. Choose a venue and topic of almost anything ranging from personal riding improvement, movement analysis, teaching tips and tricks, to certs/preps and more; we will do our best to make these happen. While looking at events, check out the three “regional” academies this winter at Red lodge, Discovery, and Grand Targhee. The academies are opportunities for multi-disciplinary fun and learning at some great resorts that offer challenging terrain for all abilities.

On the national scene, various task forces are getting together, often via Google Meets, to continue our work for more consistency between, and within, divisions. We’ve created new snowboard and alpine national standards to be implemented in 2021/22. You can view these on the national website by scrolling to the bottom of the Certification Standards page. You will notice that People and Teaching skills will be the same for all disciplines. Performance Guides (PG) for each discipline are in the process of being developed too. These will be a huge help for those going for new certs, as well as trainers and examiners, by listing examples of movement patterns for each level of certification based on the fundamentals. In the PG assessment activity (task) examples and how they will be scored will help you to be prepared for the next level, keep us consistent, and add more transparency. All of this work is helping us to create a college degree through Penn State in Snowsports Instruction. The creation of all this is driven by the divisions and supported by national. In other words, you have a voice. Contact your divisional representative for the discipline you’re looking at with any questions, comments, things you’d like to see added, etc.

We look forward to helping you meet your goals this season. Let us know what you need and we will do our best to support you!

Best,
Ben Daniel
NRM-AASI Examiner Coach & Education Chair
National Snowboard Taskforce Member

National Telemark Task Force Update

by Stew Chumbley

This summer and on into fall, all the National Task Force groups have been working diligently to put the finishing touches on the new standards that will go into implementation across divisions for the 21/22 season. Each of these task force groups consists of representatives from each division across the nation. This ensures that the Standards and materials being put forth are true representations of what each division does.

NRM has had a number of representatives on each of these task forces, and those members have put in a lot of volunteer work across the last 5 or so years to make sure we get it right.

Currently Adam Johnson and Stew Chumbley are the active Telemark representatives for NRM. Past representatives include Mary Marshall. Mary also completed her tenure as the Divisional Telemark Chair, handing off her chairwomen position to Matt Ruuhela. When you see any of these people this season, be sure to thank them all for the contributions they have made and will continue to make on behalf of NRM to the National and Divisional leadership teams.

The Telemark Ed Team will be leading events at Fall Fest as well as the Regional Academies at Red Lodge, Discovery, and Targhee, as well as holding a level 1-3 exam at Big Sky in March. Come ski with them this winter!

Earlier this month, Peter Kray interviewed Stew about his work on the Telemark Taskforce. Click here to read the full story.