Club sport garners national recognition from magazine, organization
The CU snowboard team recently proved to have talent both on the slopes and off as featured in an article titled “The Dean’s List,” in Snowboarder Magazine. The magazine has previously ranked the snowboard team as the number one collegiate snowboarding team in the nation.
Add an official meeting with the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association and a record-setting snowboard demo to the mix this season and it is easy to identify the impact that the CU program is exhibiting in the realm of collegiate, freestyle snowboarding.
“This season has been great so far,” said Jeff Popp, a member of the team and a junior political science major. “We have really gotten our name out there.”
As the current president of the club sports team, Popp established his top priorities quickly.
“At the end of last season, I decided that I wanted to step up because there were certain things that I wanted to see happen to the team that I felt I had the initiative to do.”
Popp’s ideas included a plan that is already transforming collegiate snowboarding across the nation. This past summer, Popp traveled to Albany, N.Y. to meet with the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association in hopes of negotiating a better structure for schools to compete in freestyle snowboarding.
“We went out there to promote freestyle snowboarding in the college athletic scene because in the past the USCSA has generally been nothing but alpine skiing and snowboarding with the typical downhill-racing style sports,” Popp said. “We felt we had a lot more to offer, and we presented the case that they would get more publicity by accepting us into the organization. And they understood that.”
So the USCSA voted, and members unanimously agreed to incorporate freestyle snowboarding into the organization, Popp said.
“Even if they do not know anything about it, people get intrigued by the stuff that freestyle snowboarders are doing on rails and off jumps,” he said.
The team will now have the opportunity to compete for a national collegiate title and the chance to prove that they deserve the number one ranking in the country.
“We have been pushing competition from the day I started here,” said Pat Abramson, head coach of the team. “Now we’ve finally got it to the point where we are actually going to compete against other college students that do the same thing that we do, and it is only going to grow.”
Abramson started snowboarding over 20 years ago and is in his fourth year of coaching at CU.
Currently, there are over 80 students on the team. However, only 20 students compete for the team — 12 males and eight females.
The team’s usual routine begins in September with dry land training. Practice on the snow officially starts as soon as Winter Park Resort opens. Winter Park is one of many sponsors for the CU snowboard team, and practices are held at the resort up to five days a week, allowing students to practice as often as their school schedule permits.
“Once everyone gets to know each other, you have this huge group of people to go riding with any day of the week, and I think that is the best part about the team,” Abramson said.
As the season progressed, the team soon obtained a shot at making history.
On Nov. 11, 2006, the team held a record-setting freestyle demo inside Folsom Field during halftime show during a CU football game. An audience of over 40,000 people surrounded a select few of the program’s best and most committed riders as they participated in the largest freestyle snowboarding demo ever in the nation.
“The demo was intense. My legs were shaking pretty badly because so many people were there, and it was so loud,” said Terri Mayrer, a sociology student who graduated from CU last December. Mayrer was the only female rider chosen to participate in the event.
“The demo was very successful, and the team was pretty stoked. We only had a few minutes to pull it all off, and we timed it out perfectly,” she said.
The event helped the program to validate its presence within the CU community.
“I had a person from the football program tell me that they have never seen so many people stay and watch something at halftime,” Abramson said. “It was a big turning point for the team, and we proved to the school that we are very professional in what we do, and I think they were really happy with it.”
Unfortunately, the team’s first competition of the season was cancelled. The team’s next scheduled competition will start on Feb. 10 at Winter Park.
While they look forward to competing, Popp and Abramson agreed that the team’s first competition will also offer a great opportunity to see how other programs are developing.
“I have talked to a lot of other teams across the nation, and I have seen what their programs are like, and when you objectively look at it, you really can’t compare other programs to ours,” Popp said. “We are really far ahead of the curve because we essentially started the whole scene. But I see other schools coming up to the level that we are at, and I think that is a great thing.”
Abramson explained that helping other programs across the nation is crucial in order to allow collegiate snowboarding to develop effectively.
“We are really trying to get the other teams into it. We want to help the other schools out and see their programs grow because it only makes competing better,” Abramson said.
The CU program continues to play a big role in enhancing collegiate, freestyle snowboarding, and Popp is very impressed with the presence and legitimacy that the sport is establishing.
“In the past, most people who wanted to pursue serious snowboarding did not go to college because they could not do both. But now that option is available, and it puts a whole new spin on things,” he said.
Corey Jones can be contacted at Corey.Jones@thecampuspress.com.
