ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602050048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SLATY FORK, W.VA.
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON-WICKER SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Seven-year-old Jeff Boyles pulls on the yellow pinny that identifies him as a beginning skier and sways around drunkenly in his clunky boots.
"You can't fall over in these," he says. Jeff, a member of the Mogul Busters ski school class at Snowshoe/Silver Creek resort, thinks falling down is "no problem." After all, it's only about 21/2 feet from his nose to his boots and he's had experience falling. Jeff seems more anxious about being the first in his class to master the "pizza pie" or wedge stop made with his skis in a V-shape.
Before enrolling Jeff in class, his mom, Becky, thought about whether she really wanted to spend the day practicing wedge turns with a youngster holding her legs for balance. Becky Boyles felt pretty shaky on skis herself, so it was an easy decision to let professionals be the role models.
Although the child-care/learn-to-ski programs offered by resorts are not inexpensive ($45-$85 per full day; $13-$17 for a lesson), they free parents' skiing time, give the child certified instruction and use teaching techniques worth imitating.
``Fun'' is the key word in the kids' ski program at Snowshoe/Silver Creek, says Kris "Bird" King, supervisor of the Silver Creek ski school. Instructors break teaching into games. By the end of his first day, Jeff likely will have learned to walk in his boots, stop on skis and master the lift. And he likely will have played a rousing game of tag or red-light green-light while mastering these skills.
Children enrolled in Silver Creek's full-day program receive 21/2 hours sessions of outdoor instruction, lunch and an indoor review of what they've learned.
"Most of our classes have one to three kids to an instructor," King said. "You have to respond to children's shorter attention spans and their physical needs."
Snowshoe/Silver Creek, like most resorts, enrolls students as young as 4.
Both Debby Bullis and Nancy Capobianco, instructors at Massanutten and Wintergreen respectively, started their own children skiing earlier, but proximity to the slopes had a lot to do with it.
"My son was on skis at 18 months," said Bullis. "He wasn't developmentally ready to ski independently then, so I would take him out for 10-15 minutes at a time. That much was fun for him. At 41/2, he had the attention span and strength to ski all day."
Not every child has the motor-skill development to ski at 4, Capobianco says. "Some do at 4, more at 5, and most are ready at 6," she says. "My daughter wanted to try to ski at 3 because skiing is a big deal in my family. She couldn't ski independently then, but at 4 she could."
Capobianco, a PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America) associate certified ski instructor, has 15 years of experience teaching children to ski. "The first thing we do is get them acquainted with the equipment," she said. "We play red-light or chase games, first with their boots on, then with one ski."
At both Wintergreen and Massanutten, children are taught in an enclosed area with a gentle slope. Capobianco teaches them to sidestep uphill by pushing first one ski (the banana), then the other (the gorilla). Kids learn to ski straight (in French fry position) and stop in a wedge (the pizza). At Wintergreen, the full-day program includes lunch (all this talk about food must make them hungry) and two sessions of crafts, as well as two ski lessons.
Bullis directs Massanutten's SkiWee program, a standardized program of ski instruction for children used at 77 other U.S. ski areas. Bryce, Canaan Valley, Timberline and Winterplace use SkiWee's consistent training. The same games, the same methods and the same standards for progress cards are used, so a child can easily pick up where he left off when he goes to a new resort.
SkiWee's bag of tricks includes games such as "spaceship docking" for learning the wedge stop and "gobbits and transformers" for increasing familiarity with skis.
"We try hard to keep their interest up, so that they won't have time to start missing mom and dad," Bullis said.
Repetition is important with 4-to 5-year-olds, who sometimes forget skills they seem to have mastered. "Older children can usually learn by imitating their teacher, but the littler ones may have to be moved into the correct position," Bullis said.
While the number of adult skiers has reached a plateau at many resorts, child skiers are increasing, especially at Massanutten, she said. "The number of kids in ski school has jumped 20-30 percent every year I've been here," she reports. "Our time-share business is expanding, bringing in more families, but resorts out West are seeing the same trend. I think skiing is becoming more of a family sport. The baby boomers are skiing, and now they're bringing their kids."
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. 1.- 3. Young skiers atby CNBSnowshoe/Silver Creek follow their instructor up the slope (top),
then learn to come down and get up when they fall. color.