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From the DirectorA little bit of my background and some commentary on being a part of a culture that values process over results. I’d like to think I was born with skis on my feet and a rope tow in my back yard, but a more accurate statement is that I was born an undersized cowboy, of the urban variety, in the suburban deep south, where the closest thing to frozen H20 that I ever saw was during the occasional faltering ice skating experience at the Galleria mall in Houston while my mom shopped for Stetson boots. Despite such an inauspicious beginning, it turns out that my early geographical circumstances were anything but a liability. They instead seemed to provide the impetus to actually learn something that carried me to the next level, and provided something worth teaching to the next generation of skiers.
My complete ignorance of all things alpine as a youth is probably one of the reasons I achieved any success at all. Having grown up in a city in the south (correction, those closest to me assure me that I have yet to grow up), not only far away from, but utterly unaware of, the existence of mountains or the incredible things you can do with them, I don’t believe I ever, EVER, took snow, or skiing, for granted once I finally discovered it at age eight in Breckenridge Colorado. Moreover, I didn’t make the US Ski Team until two years after high school, two years after both my headmaster and head coach at Burke had sat me down in a private meeting and politely (but firmly) informed me that a future in ski racing simply wasn’t in the cards. To be fair, had I been in their position, I would have given exactly the same sage advice. But I wasn't (I was young, stubborn, and had a "vision"), so... I didn't. Instead I went to Alaska to earn some $$ to pursue my still somewhat private and unsupported notion that I was going to race World Cup. To summarize: I was born in Houston Texas, didn't see snow until I was eight, skied at nine, raced my first race at eleven, still weighed 130 pounds when I was a junior in high school at Burke, and upon graduation wasn't anywhere near national team caliber. The point? I now almost always respectfully object when I hear "excuses" (well, typically I just poke fun at them) relating to one of my athlete's reality failing to live up to their expectations. I’ve heard (and used) them ALL already. Better that we honestly (and brutally, at times) and without judgment merely explain what did or did not happen in the past, and focus our energy on enjoying the process of mapping out better choices going forward. My own experience leads me to believe that it is extremely important for young athletes to come to the realization that circumstances themselves have the potential to be far, FAR less of a liability than their interpretation of them, and that the two should never be confused with one-another. Naturally, that gets us into the subjective realm of character. Which is basically revealed in answering questions like: Does adversity strengthen you or weaken you? Is living in Boston (as opposed to Vail or Stowe) a liability? I think you can see where I'm going with this; perhaps is the act of interpreting it as such that is the real issue to deal with? Ironically, interpreting our world involves the best of what we have to offer: creativity. What values does the athlete's environment, consisting not only of their physical environment but their emotional, spiritual and intellectual one as well, reinforce? Enter the staff to whom our kids are exposed to. Enter their parents. Enter their schools and friends. Are these groups made up of individuals who believe in the power of mind over matter, where adversity can be overcome and that's the whole point and part of the fun and why we're here, or are they surrounded by people and groups and institutions steeped in the philosophy where "self" and "accountability" do not often collide within the same sentence. In short, are they surrounded by a world that sends the message that life is half-empty? --or half full? I'd like to think that creating a true "skiing culture," so called, is the antithesis of all belief systems premised upon what can't be done and what we cannot do, and as such is an environment that any rational young person (both young and old) would gravitate to. But, much like ski racing, envisioning such a culture is one thing, execution, deployment and sustainability is another. A culture is, if nothing else, defined by what it's members consistently value through action. I'd like to think that Loon is well on its way to becoming a true skiing culture. I think it's because but we in large part value process over results more than most, which, ironically is why the results have been so strong. Don't get me wrong... I personally dig results and I really really love to win. Anyone who knows me can tell you that. That they are inherently bad, or good, is the kind of an illusion into which a true athlete can't afford to indulge too often though. Results are nothing more or less than an objective measurement of what already happened. They're quite easy to spot; for athletes, coaches, and parents. They're published and publishable. You just read the finish board, look up your points, or look in the mirror to see by the coat you're wearing whether you did or did not make the state team, the national team, the Olympic team, etc. Valued in their proper place within a true skiing culture, results are a truly fabulous tool, because they're objective measurements that rational people can and will analyze to get better, faster, and ergo have more fun. For the same reasons that they are useful and easily accessible, however, results, valued incorrectly, can be awfully distracting, not only to the individual, but to the institution that emphasizes them. They are necessarily a very distilled slice of the process or the person that generates them, and because they're easy to spot and to quantify, too often we see the very linear human tendency to associate bad results with either a process that isn't working, or good results with a process that is. While this is sometimes the case, neither scenario is a given. It's just rarely if ever that simple. And yet, we do this all of the time. It is a very understandable and human trait to distill our complex world into simpler terms. My experience is that young athletes too often subjected to such a pragmatic results-based culture (I'm not even going to call it a skiing culture) tend to lose their faith and their motivation in the sport. Instead of having faith that creating a better and better feeling by executing more and more refined movement and awareness, the holy grail becomes the podium and the points, and, before too long, the feeling is gone, right along with the results. Where does the Loon Race Team fit in? Because everyone whom we come into contact with to some degree defines the culture in which we exist, our goal is to, at least for our part while the stage is ours before the audience of our young athletes, to embody a skiing culture as the term is implied in this little treatise, and to identify the effectiveness of the value system employed by our athletes in the context of becoming better ski racers. For me personally, in working with young athletes, even before teaching how to tip a ski up onto edge, I find myself first drawn into the nature of each individual athlete's personal "process or results" cultural background. What I've found is astounding.... there's so much that can be done with athletes on this level that will save them so much trouble later on when they really do find they want to tip their skis way over at speed on a nasty steep icy GS turn. Although we obviously can't (and would not want to, for heaven's sake!) control every moment, life experience, and relationship transaction that our kids are exposed to, we can certainly try to expose them to those things that are inherently "good", for lack of a better term, that will hopefully take root and become a part of their hard-wired value system later on. How does this relate to ski racing you ask? I'm getting to that. You see, skiing and ski racing, and sports in general, are of that special brand of life experience that feel right when done right. They feel good. We are wired to enjoy the body moving in balance, and I'm a firm believer communicating the premise that the better one gets the better it feels and the easier it gets to execute. Because sports provides the intersection of a positive feeling simultaneous with correct execution, the opportunities to build life skills are tremendous. Executing a series race turns feels so good on such a visceral, personal, and individual level, that athletes over time will open themselves up to all kinds of those "good" character traits like: discipline, perseverance, delayed gratification, analysis, action, health, nutrition, time management, etc... the list goes on and on. They will... we all will... change and grow in a positive direction when presented with this kind of scenario. The reason I like sports so much is that the value system is taught by the act itself, as opposed to some worldly, and inherently suspect (for me anyway) philosophy. As a coach I am less teacher than facilitator. My job is to make it clear to each athlete the connection between attention to the process and creating their own heaven on earth. In a nutshell, therefore, my first job in working with beginning athletes, before I show them the physical movement patterns involved, is to credibly tell them ("sell" them?) that it's OK to enjoy it, that executing it right feels better than doing it wrong, etc. Then, once they make that first series of linked carved turns, they're hooked into process that rewards all of those character traits listed above, and they're rewarded each time with a really positive physical sensation that they caused to occur. THOSE are the types of activities that kids stay with for a long long time. Coaches who know what they're doing are constantly creating these types of positive feedback loops at both the micro and macro levels in the training environments for which they are responsible. When athletes are young and beginning the action-feedback loop is small. The further along the path they walk the loops can be much larger. This is how we learn to value the concept of delayed gratification. AS FAR AS the concept of immediate gratification is concerned, or in the snap crackle pop "fun" vernacular which seems to be a popular buzzword within the USSA coaches' educational fold of late, and is a fairly steady topic in the dialogues I've had with many parents over the years, it is important to always consider the nature of what we are doing. Remember, ski racing is not quite the same as chess, unless you happen to play chess while hurtling down a mountain at 40mph. While competitive chess surely involves tremendous emotional and intellectual risk, ski racing involves real physical danger, even at the younger levels where the psychological tolerance between delayed and immediate gratification is more tenuous. We cannot really afford to value success and winning in competition without also preparing ourselves to do it in a way that does not expose us to unreasonable harm. It is on those days (we've all had them) where "fun" and "skiing" simply do not in any way collide with a training session, that we can either choose to create an interpretation that it is of value, or not so much. In sum, what I am getting at is this: Talent is nice. Opportunity is always welcome. And, naturally, the availability of (typically parental) financial resources utilized in the pursuit of one's passion is awfully helpful as well. Nothing, however, takes the place of a culture with a solid value system from top to bottom. Then, steady, sincere, and committed perseverance, employed in the service of none other than one’s own, very personal, desire to achieve one’s very personal dreams, will be extremely rewarding. If you haven't figured it out by now, my particular vision is
that what we do at Loon acknowledges the importance of our athletes
having the opportunity to walk their own path as they are able, with
the benefit of having dedicated Get to know the LRT Staff. These individuals have fully bought into the notion that improvement at any level is relatively easy and fun. We really believe it! Our staff has taken on a solemn duty of sharing their experience so as to illuminate the path of their athletes' goals, while at the same time allowing the athletes is to run, walk, and, yes, to sometimes crawl their way forward upon it. The Loon Race Team coaching staff is a group of very, very committed and sincere skiing professionals, who, I'm happy to say (for better or worse), don't often take no for an answer when it comes to advancing the sport. Ergo: Troy Watts, Director, Loon Race Team
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