Q&A: Walt Evans, USSA competition director

Juniors are the future of ski racing, the promise, the hope. USSA devotes tons of personnel power, time and resources to building a foundation for junior racing. Walt Evans, director of competition services for USSA, is entrusted with the keys to the junior racing machine. Ski Racing’s Hank McKee exchanged ideas with Evans recently.

Ski Racing: Walt, talk about the domestic schedule. There’s no snow in Europe, I can see out my window the East doesn’t have a lot of snow. What’s the situation?
Walt Evans: We’re obviously concerned about this weather pattern, particularly in the East where Tim McGuire [Eastern regional alpine competition director] and the Eastern community is starting to lose races. It’s a concern not only to the racing community but also to the clubs which are trying to train athletes and trying keep athletes sparked about competition. But even more importantly, the industry out there in the East is such a dominant part of the whole welfare of the ski industry that we need to see snow in the East and we need to see it soon.

Editor’s note: A portion of this article appears in the Jan. 10 issue of Ski Racing magazine. Call 303-442-6754 to subscribe now.

Juniors are the future of ski racing, the promise, the hope. USSA devotes tons of personnel power, time and resources to building a foundation for junior racing. Walt Evans, director of competition services for USSA, is entrusted with the keys to the junior racing machine. Ski Racing’s Hank McKee exchanged ideas with Evans recently.

Ski Racing: Walt, talk about the domestic schedule. There’s no snow in Europe, I can see out my window the East doesn’t have a lot of snow. What’s the situation?
Walt Evans: We’re obviously concerned about this weather pattern, particularly in the East where Tim McGuire [Eastern regional alpine competition director] and the Eastern community is starting to lose races. It’s a concern not only to the racing community but also to the clubs which are trying to train athletes and trying keep athletes sparked about competition. But even more importantly, the industry out there in the East is such a dominant part of the whole welfare of the ski industry that we need to see snow in the East and we need to see it soon.
    I know we [were set to race Dec. 16-17] up in Sugarloaf — fortunately they’ve got some snow up there — and we’ve got some Banknorth Eastern Cups series that are going to take off this weekend. But we’re very concerned about Eastern snow. We’re also short of snow in California. PNSA is starting to get some snow now, so that’s going to stabilize. Utah, it’s raining here this morning. We do have resorts in Utah open, but we’re concerned about warm weather here, now, too. Colorado is solid. You’ve seen the high-quality races which have been produced at Aspen and Beaver Creek for the World Cups and Keystone for the NorAms and then Winter Park has been an awesome host, producing four NorAms for the women and some Rocky Mountain Trophy Series races that they picked up. So, Colorado has been kind of saving us for now, but we are concerned about the snow for sure.

SR: Can you give us an idea of the number of competitions that might be of concern?
WE: I haven’t looked real closely at it. On the USSA calendar, I think in the case of the East, Rocky/Central and West, there probably are about 12 USSA starts per gender in each of the three regions. I suspect in the case of East and West we’ll be lucky to get a third of those out of the gate. It’s about the same for the FIS races, too. We’ve got some early races in Mammoth in the West and I’m not certain we’ll be able to get those off. I haven’t spoken with Lester [Keller, Western regional director] — we’ll be talking about that and get an update on the calendar. And, like I said, McGuire is on the edge getting those FIS starts off. I think we’re looking at probably 36 starts nationwide and maybe 20 starts per gender in FIS that are at risk right now in December.

SR: There isn’t a lot of chance to make those up is there? The schedule is pretty full.
WE: It’s very full, and you know our effort in the last few years is to have the regional directors drive the FIS schedule and the reason they’re driving is that we really want to build in a periodized racer management plan for the athletes. We want to drive that through scheduling to some degree, so that athletes that are on a FIS tour, or on a USSA tour or series, have the opportunity to train and then the opportunity to compete and then the opportunity to rest and then they do it again: train, compete, rest, train, compete rest. And then in the meantime they have to take care of their academic obligations and there should be a conditioning component as well, so we’re trying to manage the schedule with appropriate numbers of competitions. When we have cancellations like this, it’s going to impact the schedule in January or February, which really throws the concept of periodization out of sync.

SR: National Development System — what I think many people know about it is the name. What is it?
WE: We’re evolving. The National Development System was conceived and developed in the spring of 2000 by Alan Ashley in cooperation with Kirk Dwyer, who was the national development chairman at that time. So in the spring of 2000, I took the helm. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to steer and work with regional directors and our academies and clubs to build a National Development System. So we built a structure in the spring of 2000 and launched the program at that time. Then, when Jesse [Hunt, USSA alpine director) came on in the spring of 2002, Jesse worked very closely with me and my staff to refine the focus of the National Development System.     There are four focuses, which are really key. Number one is clear path. We want the athletes, the parents and the coaches to understand exactly what the athlete needs to do to qualify for an NDS project, or to qualify for one of our major teams, like the World Juniors or the World University Games or the U.S. Ski Team or the World Ski Championships.
    Number two is content. We want to make sure that in any national project, any NDS project or any regional project, the content is a very high quality and is focused on skill development. Probably in the area of content is where we've made the most progress with really a lot of focus from Jesse, Finn Gundersen [director of alpine education] and Andy Walshe (assistant athletic director — Sport Science and education) in developing our new CD library. We started with the technical CD, the fundamental CD, we launched that. And now the tactics CD is out and there are a number of other CDs and tools that we have to really drive content. Even from a non-alpine standpoint we have a psychology program, the nutrition program and this fall we launched the U.S. Ski Team medals testing CD, which will standardize conditions and fitness levels of athletes.
    Number three is racer management and that comes back to this notion of athletes need to train, race and rest. That needs to be planned and we need to stick to plans with clear goals for the athletes. Racer management is a critical partnership between my NDS coaches and the home coaches and the athletes and their parents so that it is really clear what the at
hlete’s schedule needs to be on an annual basis.
    And finally the fourth critical factor is this development and education partnership, stressing the importance of education for coaches, athletes and parents. And for the staff, too. So my NDS staff is really engaged in delivering coaches education and there’s a real focus at raising the knowledge level of all the athletes in all the domains of ski racing.
    So those are the four things that Jesse brought to focus for us: clear path, content, racer management and education. As the National Development System evolves, we are getting better in each of those. We’re a long ways from having a perfect situation, but we’re getting better at clear path selection systems. Our content I think has really come along and part of that is the commitment of the club and academy coaches who help us coach our projects. Racer management, we’ve got a long ways to go there because our schedule is always changing and we’re learning more about how to program the athletes and how to partnership with their home coaches so that the athletes really have a consolidated racer management plan.

SR: Which will be tested severely this season.
WE: Oh my goodness, yes. The longer we wait for snow, the tougher it is, for sure. With no snow in Europe, that is impacting our domestic programs. With the National Development System we operate about 12 projects a year, one-third for J3 and younger, one-third for J1 and J2 and about a third for seniors and PGs [postgraduate]. With the NDS, I have a small national budget so I can make fairly small grants to the projects in order to support the staff and try to keep the costs low for the athletes, but the projects are self-funded so the athletes need to make a substantial contribution toward the project cost and toward their own airfare to get there. One of the really important things for us in the success of these projects, in addition to content, and I mentioned it before, is the staff. If we can get the best coaches in the country to get together with the best kids in the country, there’s going to be a chemistry that happens around centralized content that is just magic. So we’ve had very, very good luck with our National Development System projects because of the coaches that are engaging. Guys like Adam Chadbourne and Stever Bartlett. The best coaches in the country have been engaged with this thing. It makes it just magical when the kids come together and can work with the best coaches.

SR: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts?
WE: Exactly.

SR: It seems to me decision making can be a bit cyclical. A theory discarded a few years back resurfaces. Are our programs being given enough time to prove they work, or not?
WE: That’s a very reasonable question. I have found Bill Marolt [USSA president/CEO] and Alan Ashley while he was here and now Jesse Hunt can be quite patient with our ideas about national development. You are absolutely right. It takes time and it takes a commitment to watch programs work. I have to say I really applaud the patience that I’ve seen from our leadership here in allowing the National Development System projects, and also our calendar, to work. Granted, we need to tweak things and advance things, but we have really, really good planning here at USSA now, which involves evaluate, plan and then execute on an annual basis. We've been doing this for 10 years now, and Marolt really drives the evaluation model so we’re sure we’re doing the right things that so we are achieving our goals. If we’re not doing that, then we can either change our goals or we need to further tweak the implementation strategy. You are right, things are cyclical, but fortunately we’ve had leadership here at USSA which has been very patient and believes in this notion of continuity and taking time for things to work.

SR: For the past decade or so, the talent coming into the U.S. Ski Team seems to be pretty good.
WE: Having just had the National Development System junior speed camp at Beaver Creek, I think we have a bright future through 2014, because the kids I was working with — 15- and 16-year olds — they are very, very high-quality athletes and as importantly, they are really high-quality people. They are young professionals and they take this very seriously. I’m proud to be part of it.

SR: I’m a coach with a promising 14-year-old. I’m out of Podunk, Pennsylvania. How do I make sure he gets the best chance to qualify for JOs?
WE: I think the most important thing for a coach in a small program is to clearly understand the selection system and selection criteria for a Junior Olympic event. Once that understanding is captured and he has a clear idea of what the marker events are, then manage the racer so that the racer has every opportunity to perform at potential at those marker events. And typically, as you know, for the J3a and J4s, there may only be one or two or three weekends that are marker events. So it is just incumbent on the coach of a promising athlete to have the athlete prepared in the very best way possible for those marker events.

SR: OK. So how does the guy in Podunk find out what weekend those are for his region?
WE: The structure is complex. And I have to admit it is more complex than any of us would like. In the East, there are eight state organizations. Central has four subregions. Rocky Mountain is a division of its own. In the West, there are five divisions that manage the affairs of local athletes. So, a J3 or J4 athlete needs to understand the state or divisional qualification procedure. Those procedures are available in their comp books, they’re available on the Web site or they’re available through conversation with staff. Our USSA staff is regionally based but they can always help a young coach or a young athlete or new parents understand the selection system and what are the marker events for a young athlete to emerge to the top level.
    One thing I’d like to add to that — our Web [site]. We work pretty hard at keeping schedules current and athlete profiles in terms of ranking and FIS points current on the Web site, so I really urge folks to use our Web site, www.usskiteam.com, or www.USSA.org is primarily for our members and our competitors but we try to keep those criteria very current and then we link back to all the state organizations so that you can find those rules. I wish it was a little more efficient, but we do have it up and it’s available electronically.

SR: Not completely user friendly, but it’s not bad. Let’s go up to the top of it now. What do we do to raise public awareness of NorAms?
WE: You know that is an interesting question. The strategy with the NorAms has been just a real focus on quality, and what I mean by that is quality venues that can produce snow surfaces and the protection systems that we need to offer our athletes so we can really test them. We strive to put our competitions on World Cup venues so that we know the athletes are being tested and have the opportunity to experience the toughest venues in the world and for sure, that’s paying off in terms of our athlete quality. Our sites are more stable now than they have been with many of the sites, particularly Keystone for two years, Winter Park for probably a decade and a half, Big Mountain for a decade, those sites along with Sunday River and Hunter when they’re on the schedule, they’ve been really great resources for us. So coming back to it, the focus has been to ensure the venues do a great job and we’re in a pretty place with that. Raising public awareness of NorAms is a new challenge fo
r us. You’ll remember five or six years ago we had the Chevrolet Super Series and there was quite a budget dedicated to raising the awareness; prize money and some television, went along with the NorAms. That strategy was wonderful and it really did help us increase public awareness, and if we have the money to do that, it’s a great investment, but the primary thing is for us to be able deliver great venues and so budget priorities need to go to support those sites.
    Now, as we evolve I’m hopeful, frankly, that the press takes an interest, without a funding or financial investment, in our American athletes who are skiing so well at that level. And I’m particularly excited about the junior athletes performance this year at all the technical events in Colorado and then the speed events up in Canada. The junior performance has been quite outstanding, so I’m hopeful the press will start to follow our juniors and take some ownership in this and feel some pride in the juniors who are starting to emerge now.

SR: We’ll do what we can, how’s that?
WE: That’s the best. At Keystone, for instance, I was chief of race there. A real opportunity for me — and, every day, USSA juniors won all three podium spots and that, that was a pretty cool deal. [Will] Brandenburg took four golds in those NorAms as a junior with 22 nations present. So those juniors are coming along. Now Travis Ganong up in Lake Louise is hitting home runs. He was sixth yesterday in Panorama in the first super combined in North America.

SR: Roughly, how many clubs/academy programs are there and can you give some examples on how different they can be? And isn’t diversity good?
WE: We have around 350 USSA member clubs. Eighty percent of those are probably alpine clubs or multisport clubs that include alpine. And there are probably nationwide around 30 clubs and academies that ultimately produce the athletes that move onto the D team on an annual basis, or qualify athletes for world juniors, or Topolino or Whistler for the major competitions that we field as a nation. So there are probably 30 real premier clubs in the nation that are producing the bulk of the athletes.
    The diversity of the programs is substantial. I mean it goes everywhere from fully integrated academy environment like those major academies in the East that do such a good job and have done a great job for decades at producing a full, well-rounded athlete, academically, physically, technically, tactically. Those turnkey programs like the major academies they do a fabulous job. They are expensive. And they are not easy to get into. They’re very selective about which athletes they invite. They are screening them for many competencies for sure. Then you come to the clubs that are tied with major resorts. Like Aspen and Vail, and Park City and Winter Park, Mammoth, those clubs are closely integrated with the local resort’s race department, they engineer training and competition in a partnership with the race department. Those programs, athletically, provide wonderful opportunities for athletes as well, and probably on some of the best terrain in the world. So there’s another environment that is pretty special for young people to attend those programs.
    The new model, and an important model, is the local academic environment like Crested Butte, which has a new academy, Vail partners with their local school, Park City has a great relationship with the new private school here and those opportunities make it awesome for the athletes because the athletes can study in the off-season and then take a lighter schedule or take the winter period off and not be concerned about academics. So those environments are first class for sure. The local ski clubs however that are producing the bulk of the kids and providing environments for the athletes on a weekly basis, that’s really the foundation of the whole sport. Those clubs through the Midwest who have great coaching going on and they have a really good environment for athletes on a daily basis, that’s where the fundamentals and the values of the sport are learned in those small resorts. In the end they may or may not graduate to a more-intense academy or full-time environment or one of the ski clubs in the Rockies or the West. But there’s a whole menu of environments out there and that’s what the responsibility of the clubs is— environment.

SR: So diversity is good.
WE: It is good. We’d like see more clubs for sure, we’d like to see athletes who are a little bit younger getting an environment where they can learn racing skills earlier — in fact we’re talking among staff right now about the possibility of a new membership category for J6s and under because frankly we’ve kind of left that to the ski schools and the local environment to build that. We think, maybe nationwide a membership category that’s affordable and multi-sport for J6s might be one of the solutions.

SR: I’ve got, uh, one question left.
WE: Sounds like a zinger.

SR: I’m not sure … in the past, established qualifications have been tweaked every once in a while to allow a talented individual to be advanced. Can that be combated, should be it combated? Does this need to be dealt with, or is it working?
WE: This opportunity for staff and our coaches to have discretion in a small way is very important. We are careful not to take advantage of it. Obviously the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Amateur Sports Act control athletes’ rights and regulate athletes’ rights and if those rights are violated the athletes have every right to file an appeal about that. First through our USSA structure, our bylaws and so forth, but the Amateur Sports Act and the USSA by-laws still provide for a little flexibility in selection criteria.
Our basic guideline is no more than 20 percent of the field or the team can be identified by discretion. We typically are far less than that for our choices. In fact for the NorAm Cup, if I have 50 slots available, five are dedicated to development and discretion. And that’s exactly what I’ll use in the upcoming NorAm Cups at Sunday River. I have five development spots available and I will utilize those for juniors and it’s likely I won’t necessarily go straight down the ranking list, of GS and slalom because we may have an outstanding GS junior, or outstanding slalom junior that are further down the overall ranking list but are outstanding in one discipline. Or, maybe they have shown outstanding performance in the last couple of weeks and their points haven’t caught up to them yet. So I think it’s very important to have flexibility, discretion and believe me, as we exercise discretion, I do that among three regional directors and myself, and the regional directors provide a real safeguard against any abuse. It’s quite interesting to watch these three professionals work to try to advance athletes who they feel are deserving. It’s going to come up next week in our staff meeting. We definitely have a challenge at both Mont Ste. Anne and Sunday River to make sure that we provide the opportunities that have been earned by outstanding youngsters whose points haven’t caught up to them.

SR: Anything else you’d like to touch on?
WE: Yeah, there is. There’s a couple of things that are cookin’ away here in Park City that we don’t talk about a lot with the press, but I want the community to know how important venue development is to us. As we move forward over time, we want to work closely with our resorts, our race hosts and our training sites to ensure that the proper snow surfaces are being prepared
for athletes, whether in training or competition, and that we have the proper protection installations in place so that athletes can train and compete in a secure environment. We’re working in staff and the National Alpine Sports Committee to develop a plan and a strategy so that over time we can work with all of our venues to help them understand how to produce good, hard, snow surfaces and adequate security installations so our athletes are really in a secure environment.
    There are three strategies we’re working on. Number one is education, so our coaches and officials understand how to work with the snow and install the safety protections. Number two is security. Regions, states, divisions now are investing in substantial inventories of B-nets, which is good. National tries to supplement that as we can so we’re really making some progress in that area. Finally, the third strategy will be inspection of courses in the future. Frankly we’re going to need to start homologating USSA GS and slalom courses in the future. We haven’t done that in the past, but we’re probably going to develop a strategy to launch that initiative in the springtime.