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Grateful for AVSC

Dear Editor:

We are writing to express our sincere gratitude to the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club. It means everything to our family that our daughter is part of this amazing program.

AVSC has incredibly dedicated staff and coaches, sponsors and supporters. Each child in the valley can learn to ski and/or snowboard and through the club take their sport as far as they can. Our children started in Aspenauts and 17 years later our daughter is an internationally competitive snowboarder with AVSC Snowboard Team 2.



AVSC not only works with its members’ athletic skills, but also helps young athletes develop as people. They learn life skills like teamwork. This may sound surprising since snowboarding and skiing are not team sports, but through AVSC athletes learn how to support and work with teammates of all ages.

Learning to compete with AVSC has also taught our daughter, Kyla Sobieralski, how to become a gracious person. She has learned to appreciate accomplishments and how to get past and work through hard times. AVSC is an extended family to us all, and even former teammates are still important people in our lives.




We are grateful beyond what words can convey to AVSC Snowboard team director Miah Wheeler and Team 2 coach Travis McClain for their passion for snowboarding and dedication to their athletes. Their energy and empathy are focused on the “whole person” and not just the athlete. They exemplify AVSC’s core values: Commitment • Teamwork • Integrity. All the snowboard coaches are outstanding, but we also want to give special thanks to Tyler Lindsay, Chad “Chappy” Thomson, Ryan Jervis and Jason Cook.

In addition to thanking the snowboard program coaches, Freestyle Ski Team coach Jeff Stump and Nordic team director John Callahan must be recognized because they go out of their way to encourage athletes in all the AVSC disciplines.

There are too many names to list of each coach and staff member of AVSC who deserves thanks for dedication and hard work to develop the athletes. To everyone whose names we did not list, we apologize and thank you, too.

To illustrate one of the many things training with AVSC has made possible, this past May, our daughter had the experience of a lifetime! She spent a week at Mammoth with the USSA halfpipe Olympic team coach Bud Keene and other athletes in the USSA Project Gold Development program. To train with USSA was amazing, and would have never happened without Aspenauts all the way through AVSC Base Camp to the AVSC Snowboard Team.

Of course, without the continued support of the AVSC board of directors and AVSC National Council none of the valley’s youth would even have a place to start. We deeply and humbly thank these indispensable supporters.

Thank you so much to AVSC and everyone who is so generous to the program with their time, energy and money. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

John and Sherry (Young) Sobieralski

Carbondale