Young racers tune up at the Eric Hays Memorial

The Eric Hayes Memorial races were held this weekend at the Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, UT, bringing together racers from all over the Intermountain division of the USSA. The open format allowed 250 male and female racers from the college level down to first-year J3s to work towards their World Cup dreams. The four-day event gave the young racers a chance to warm up for the season on two giant slaloms and two slaloms.The Eric Hayes Memorial races were held this weekend at the Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, UT, bringing together racers from all over the Intermountain division of the USSA. The open format allowed 250 male and female racers from the college level down to first-year J3s to work towards their World Cup dreams. The four-day event gave the young racers a chance to warm up for the season on two giant slaloms and two slaloms.

The 15-year-old event was created by the Hays family after their son, Eric, a Park City Ski Team racer, passed away in a car accident. Hayes’s brother, an artist and potter, makes hand-made, ceramic awards for the top finishers.

“Some of these college skiers who have been competing here for ten years have a whole collection of his pottery, it’s pretty neat.,” director of the Park City Ski Team Dave Galusha says.

Past pottery winners include the U.S. Ski Team’s Ted Ligety, Steven Nyman and TJ Lanning.

“It’s an incredible opportunity because we have the collegiate skiers here, they provide some great points for the younger athletes,” Galusha says. “We priorities to get our athlete’s here for this race, where it’s not a qualifier for anything, guys can be loose and ready to go. Over the years it’s been a great scoring opportunity for the kids who are ready,” Galusha says.

The races were the first of the season for almost all the athletes, and while the snowfall continued throughout the weekend, the level of competition grew with the accumulating crystals.

“The sport is certainly healthy here in the intermountain, not only in number of kids participating but the level of skiing going on, there are some skinny legged kids just firing out there,” Galusha says.

Along with being a great learning experience for the racers, getting together in Park City for some early season racing proved to be more than a little bit of fun too.

“It’s fun because you can compare your times to [the college racers] and see how many seconds your off from them, some of the us were only 5 seconds behind them,” Bridger Clifford, a 14-year-old J3 from the Park City Ski Team says.

For complete results from the 2008 Eric Hays Memorial click here.