Clubhouse Chronicles: AVSC and the meaning of access

Editor’s note: With winter soon arriving, we thought this was a good time to re-launch Clubhouse Chronicles, a column written by the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club alongside The Aspen Times. The plan is to publish the column every other Tuesday through the winter months, with stories and results coming straight from the AVSC staff, coaches, and athletes.

November is an exciting time at the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club. Our athletes will soon return to training on snow, and we’re building the dreams of others who get to experience snow sports for the first time.

This past Saturday, in collaboration with our partners, Gorsuch and Aspen Snowmass, we geared up nearly 400 youth from as far away as New Castle with skis and snowboards. These recipients will participate in our Aspen Supports Kids recreational program later this year, and this gear offers pivotal access to winter sports for those who might not otherwise be able to experience the slopes this season.

For those new to the valley, AVSC is the oldest and largest youth nonprofit in our community. When we recently did some online sleuthing, the internet suggested we may be the largest youth ski and snowboard club in the nation, if not the world.

Since 1937, we’ve been championing access to youth winter sports, and today we serve around 3,000 local youth from Silt to Aspen in both competitive and recreational programming. Our disciplines span from Alpine to Nordic, freestyle (freeride, moguls, park and pipe, telemark) to snowboard, including our newest discipline, ski mountaineering (SkiMo).

Annually, we provide over $800,000 in direct financial aid, in addition to subsidizing every program at nearly 50% to ensure all youth here can experience the power, passion, and joy that so many of us find in the mountains.

Access, then, is our lifeblood. It’s the driver behind our mission to provide all youth in the greater Roaring Fork Valley with the opportunity to excel as athletes and as people through winter sports. We’re perhaps best known for our financial commitments to youth, but the word “access” has many layers.

In November, early access to the slopes on our Stapleton Training Center (when the weather cooperates) allows our competitive athletes to get in their turns and tricks on snow and still come home to their beds at night before a long season of competitive travel. When Aspen Snowmass opens, our athletes have access to the four distinct mountains that make up one of the best ski resorts in the world and provide exceptional terrain for every level of our programming. In the broader community, our Nordic athletes have access to the largest free network of Nordic trails in North America.

Access is also about exposure. The list of elite athletes who have come through the club, trained at the club, and mingled with our young athletes is so long that we can’t even quantify it. Just last month half a dozen alumni were chosen for U.S. Ski and Snowboard teams, and many more are in the pipeline or headed to World Cup-level competitions. We hope to cheer for many of them at the Olympics later this year.

Our young athletes also get to watch these elite heroes compete here at home in competitions ranging from X Games to The Snow League to Aspen’s long-running history of World Cups. Club athletes themselves get to compete on their home turf through series like the Aspen Cup, USASA, the Ute Series, and Rocky Mountain Nordic Junior National Qualifier Weekend, and the Wilder Dwight Memorial Classic Ski Race, which is the oldest memorial Alpine race series in the United States. That hometown access is priceless, and we invite our community to come out and cheer on our athletes this winter (AVSC Calendar).

In our recreational program, youth are taught by Aspen Snowmass instructors, who are generally considered to be some of the best in the world. On the competitive side, our club draws the best coaches in the nation — individuals who have been champions on the world stage and many of whom went through the club and have returned home to us to continue sharing their passion and expertise. These dedicated coaches offer a form of access that isn’t as well-known. In their commitment to our mission, they ensure our youth not only excel as athletes, but as people. At AVSC, youth learn critical life skills — how to persevere, manage anxiety and failure, be coachable, and thrive through mindfulness and healthy sleep, nutrition, and exercise. These skills serve our athletes far beyond the doors of our clubhouse.

Finally, none of this would be possible without access to this remarkable community that has championed AVSC since its founding days. Community support has been the engine revving us for nearly 90 years. We will celebrate our supporters and stakeholders at our largest fundraiser of the year, the 16^th annual Audi Ajax Cup, later in December. Tickets go on sale this week at teamavsc.org, and we look forward to seeing you on Dec. 30 at the base of Aspen Mountain.

When the slopes close in the spring, the access doesn’t end. The Clubhouse stays open, as does Buttermilk’s halfpipe, allowing our kids to squeeze in every ounce of practice from the lingering snow. When even the halfpipe melts away, we take to the trails. We pick up bikes and rollerblades and spend time giving back through service projects. And even while enjoying those summer days, our thoughts return to winter when the Clubhouse fills with the sounds of our youth training, growing, and excelling.

AVSC can’t take credit for much of the access that we are fortunate enough to provide, but we take advantage of all the blessings and opportunities that help us build excellent athletes and people. Over the coming winter months in these Clubhouse Chronicles, we’ll share stories about access and the people behind our mission. In the meantime, thank you for your support, and let’s all think snow!

Clubhouse Chronicles is a behind-the-scenes column written by the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club that runs periodically in the Aspen Times.