The first big snow dump of the season couldn't have come at a better time for Andrew Casey.
While most city dwellers were cursing the 28 centimetres that fell on the city last week, Casey was on his skis at Otway Nordic Centre teaching racing techniques to the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club's current crop of young trailblazers.
Skiing in late October was a rare novelty for the 25-year-old native of Corner Brook, Nfld., hired in mid-July as the first full-time cross-country ski coach in Caledonia club history.
"The last two years in Newfoundland we didn't have snow until mid-January," said Casey, who spent two years as a high-performance racer at the national training centre in Thunder Bay. Ont., before beginning a two-year stint as head coach of the Newfoundland/Labrador provincial team.
Until the white stuff arrived, Casey had already been working in dryland training for three months with Caledonia club athletes, with noticeable results. He's been coming to the slopes armed with a new tool to correct flaws in stride technique that will be used throughout the club in all programs -- an iPad that records skiers in action and analyzes what they are doing incorrectly. The program allows him to freeze the video and draw lines to show where body positioning should be.
With Casey's hiring, the club is shifting its focus to raise the profile of its programs. His emphasis on developing the track attack (eight-to-12-year-old) and junior racers is designed to give the club a more prominent role in placing athletes on provincial teams in cross-country and biathlon. He will also be working with the club's base of volunteer coaches to improve all programs, from jackrabbits to school group/private lessons and masters skiing.
"Track attack is meant to grasp all the kids coming out of Jackrabbits and have them continue on into their teens," said Casey. "That 12-13-year-old age group is so critical and if you can't keep them interested and excited they will just drop off. They've always had the program but it just hasn't been sold as a continuation of Jackrabbits. You want to introduce kids to competitive skiing as a positive activity. You want them to be able to race and not have them feel there's a huge demand on them doing well."
The club now has 30 junior racers (cross-country and biathlon) and there are 15 athletes in track attack, a membership Casey hopes to double this year. The first cross-country races on the B.C. Cup calendar are Dec. 18-19 in Vernon and the biathletes will get underway Nov. 24-25 in Canmore, Alta., a Nor-Am event. The Caledonia club will host both B.C. Cup provincial championships at Otway -- Feb. 2-3 (cross-country) and Feb. 22-24 (biathlon).
"This is the biggest club in B.C. and we have one of the largest skill-development programs and it's the same with club memberships. B.C. has produced good skiers, the people who get to the national team of the national training centres, but maybe not as many as it should have, and this could be a hub for that," Casey said.
"If you look across the board, all across Canada, the clubs that have full-time coaches are the most successful ones."
Casey has a degree in kinesiology from Memorial University of Newfoundland and he says Prince George is well-positioned with a university and a college to attract student athletes.
"One of the biggest deterrents for people to stay in the sport at a competitive level is they're not able to do school," said Casey. "You've got state-of-the-art trails, we're going to have a state-of-the-art biathlon range, and if people get to the point where they're done high school and they want to continue to ski and do post-secondary at CNC or UNBC. It's all here."
Casey's wife Erica is a medical doctor now serving a two-year family practice residency at UHNBC. Part of the appeal of her coming to Prince George was the city offered Andrew the opportunity to continue as a ski coach.
"I had been here once before for the national [cross-country] championships in 2005, but she came in here blind," he said. "I love it here, it's been a real surprise for both of us, and we're really enjoying it."
