A weekend of events, culminating with a photo placement ceremony Saturday afternoon to immortalize three athletes in the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, kicks off Friday night in Ishpeming, Michigan.
A WEEKEND of events, culminating with a photo placement ceremony Saturday afternoon to immortalize three athletes in the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, kicks off Friday night in Ishpeming, Michigan.
    This year’s annual Hall of Fame weekend honors former Olympic moguls champion Jonny Moseley, former World Championships double-gold medalist and World Cup champion Trace Worthington and former World Championships slalom medalist and three-time World Cup winner Julie Parisien.
    All three inductees are expected to attend the weekend ceremonies, including Moseley and wife Malia, who recently welcomed a baby boy into their family.
    The public is invited to attend Saturday afternoon’s placement ceremony where Moseley, Worthington and Parisien will each have their plaques placed in the Honors Court at the Hall of Fame. The ceremony is scheduled for 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. local time.
    This year’s inductees were first recognized during a breakfast in January at the SIA industry trade show in Las Vegas.
    
Moseley opened the door to inverts
Moseley, the 1998 Olympic champion with his 360 mute grab at the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, also was cited as a pioneer for helping kick open the doors to more creative maneuvers by moguls skiers with his off-axis "dinner roll" in the 2002 season and at the Olympics. Until the 2003 season, skiers were not allowed to do inverted jumps, i.e., their feet could not go above their head.
    However, Moseley, pushing to open his sport, gave himself up at the Olympics so officials would release some of the restrictions, according to USSA VP Tom Kelly, who introduced all three former athletes and told part of their story. Within a year, moguls was blown wide open with off-axis permitted in 2003 and inverted jumps during the '04 season.
    "It's been a group effort," Moseley said in January, spotlighting his "coaches, mentors and advisors," starting with his parents, who were on hand for the ceremony, sitting with former coach Cooper Schell and Moseley's wife Malia.
    Moseley, in his signature easy-smiling manner, pointed out how he followed his two older brothers, Jeff and Rick into freestyle at Squaw Valley in the Lake Tahoe area; Jeff, he said, "was inspired by 'Hot Dog: The Movie'" as he entered them in a dual moguls contest; Rick was Moseley's first tutor, he said, and always would critique Jonny's run but then flip out when he'd come out "and I'd be talking to some chick."
    Moseley thanked his first coach at Squaw, Raymond deVre, and Schell as well as Glen Plake — the free-living, free-thinking ski icon, who was seated in the crowd — for providing some inspiration and said Worthington was "an awesome, awesome athlete" who was great as a teammate and friend.

Parisien: from medal-winning skier to gold-medal mom
Parisien, who retired after the 1999 season, said simply, "It's amazing to be remembered. One day you go from being first in the world [she led the world slalom rankings heading into the 1993 season] to being a suburban mom, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and barely getting a shower in …
    "There's no better feeling in the world than when you're arcing a big, fat GS turn. I miss the big GS turns … the sun over the Alps as you're going up in the chairlift for the first run … I miss being outside every day in winter," she added.
    But, in the end, as important as her skiing was, as successful as she was, she always remembered the words of her late and much-loved brother, J.P., who was killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run in December 1992, "It's just skiing …" so she should not get too high, nor get too low.
    "I'm proud of what I've done, and everything I learned in skiing I draw on every day" as a mother, challenged at 35 by four youngsters ages 5, 4, 2 and newborn 5-month old.
    "We're outnumbered," she said, referring with a laugh to parents of young kids, but the self-confidence Parisien developed as a ski racer — from Lost Valley Ski Area to Sugarloaf to Burke Mountain Academy to three Olympics, not to mention two years as the No. 1 woman on the now-defunct pro tour — gives her strength to cope with being a mother and the wife of a  husband who's in his last year of medical school.
    And, perhaps most important, she said, is what she took away from her brother's death: "Take the good out of everything you can."
    Parisien hasn't skied in five years, and she put in a lighthearted bid for new equipment from Rossignol, her longtime ski company. She also took time to specifically thank Jeff Byrne, senior VP of the Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid, New York, who was her first coach at Sugarloaf. "Byrnie, you were the best. That technique you taught me I used all through my career," she said.

"Trace the Ace" — U.S. World Cup, worlds champ
Worthington said being elected to the Hall of Fame "validated" his career although it wasn't the reason he competed. In the summer of 1986 when he won the junior world aerials title (in Australia), Worthington told the audience, he knew "I could be a great athlete and a great competitor." He would go on to win 37 World Cup events, three World Championships medal (two gold), a half-dozen World Cup titles and nearly a dozen U.S. championships … plus two Olympics.
    Worthington, who was born in Minnesota but grew up in Winter Park, Colorado, remains the only skier to have won two gold medals at a single World Championships. In 1995, he won aerials and combined gold at Worlds in LaClusaz, France. Sadly, however, Worthington — the first American to land a quad-twisting triple (four twists and three flips) — was afflicted with some kind of vertigo or virus that tossed his internal gyro and threatened him as he jumped 50-60 feet off the snow.
    Kelly said rather than take up extra time with coaches looking to help him through his medical situation, or whatever it was, Worthington retired to free coaches to work with other athletes on the U.S. Ski Team.
    "I always looked back; I wanted to see who started my sport. I hope some day I can be an inspiration to kids looking to get into my sport," Worthington said.
    Worthington, who had about 20 family (including his father, brother and wife, Trisha, VP and head of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation) and friends in Las Vegas, laughed as he pointed out Chris Seemann — "C-dawg," his early trampoline buddy after moving to Winter Park. "We'd jump nine hours a day, have 10 Pepsis a day (we thought we were rehydrating ourselves) and we'd just jump all day …"
    He cited Wayne Hilterbrand, longtime U.S. head coach and aerials head coach, as the finest coach he ever had.
    "Anything 'Wayno' told me I did — and I'd win. It was crazy…" He also noted Steve Roxberg, a former acro skier, "was the greatest roommate" and Brian Currutt, a current U.S. coach after retiring in 2003, "revitalized me with his energy at the end of my career."
    And Worthington made a pitch to potential Hall
of Fame voters to pay attention to two other teammates, former world champ Lane Spina (who lives in Las Vegas "and had 50 more podiums) and aerialist Kris Feddersen, who sat at his table and "who had 30 podiums" in his career.