Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992 TAG: 9202240233
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BARUDIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE JOY OF PIZZA-PERFECT RUNS
For a decade I envied the dads with video cameras capturing the moment junior finally slid on his own skis, unsupported. For two ski seasons I've clamped my daughter's tiny immobile feet onto mini-skis and pointed them downhill, hoping I could afford a camcorder before it was too late.I have learned that neither love of skiing nor fatherhood prepared me to teach my 6-year-old how to do this. They get special instructors for karate, dance and jujitsu. Skiing calls even more heavily upon tolerance, patience and money . . . so, let it be done quickly. I would splurge on lessons.
When we arrived at The Homestead's ski school, Verity was more interested in packing snowballs than the task at hand. Her wool gloves turned to chunks of ice. It was cold and blustery and I had only packed one pair.
She hadn't mentioned going back inside until Sepp Kober snapped her skis on. He's done this for 30 years, as director of skiing at The Homestead, and had become deaf to the pleas.
Verity's class instructor introduced herself in a heavy Austrian accent, "Hi, my name is Karen - follow me." Immediately, just like that, four or five tikes waddled like ducklings in line behind her up an incline.
"Now, we learn to stop," Karen announced. "Here make a slice of pizza."
She showed them how to lean forward and touch their boots - no easy task! This helped dig the short skis into the snow. In 15 minutes the kids trailed Karen over to the rope tow.
I understood at this moment what many parents must feel: no matter how my offspring did, the most satisfying part was that she wanted to stay out and learn.
"We do hula-hula now," shouted Karen skiing backward in front of the children. "Hula-hula see . . . you turn." She swung her hips. The kids pushed this way and that. I could barely detect my daughter inching to the left when Karen pushed down firmly on her right knee. Verity turned. I was ecstatic.
When Karen herded the small flock onto the rope tow, to my amazement Verity clutched the rope like the other children and went up the 100 feet to the start of the "run." This is a little girl who doesn't walk to the fridge when an adult is in earshot.
I stood at the bottom. My eyes slid over to the main ski trails a hundred yards away. Skiers zoomed down. Somehow, I didn't feel like I was missing out, though, even when it dawned on me I'd be spending the rest of the ski season on the bunny slope.
When I looked back, Verity was angling down the little hill to the rope tow. She wanted to go back up. She did not want to go back to the room where her Mom was, as I had dreaded.
After the sixth time up the rope, the class stopped for lunch. I asked Karen for advice to parents who insist on teaching offspring themselves.
"Kids learn by watching other people, not by thinking," she said. "Adults need to have things explained. They think too much. Children just get bored."
Karen Fischer, 24, is from a small town near Vienna. She told me that she was on unpaid leave from her job at Austria's Ministry of Economics. Every winter, Kober brings a dozen young Austrians to Hot Springs to teach skiing. It's part of the ambiance of the five-star Homestead.
Verity crumpled a few french fries into her mouth and was ready to go back out. I followed her up the rope tow for the second time. When she fell, I pounced to scoop her up. I came up over her, dutifully attentive, feeling smugly the dad-protector. I bent forward. She screamed - I mean screamed like I hadn't heard since she was an infant. My ski had run over her finger.
I took off her glove. The middle finger was bleeding and already swollen. In the first aid room ski patrol members had enough training not to make me feel like a heel, but I saw it in their eyes. They suggested X-rays and tried to put ice on the swelling. The last thing she wanted was ice. She wanted Mom. We caught the shuttle to the hotel.
During the ride down, I know I hurt much more than she did. I had destroyed my daughter's forever-remembrance of learning to ski with Dad. And I had arranged it so carefully. Now she was in the room, elbow propped on a pillow, finger pointing upward.
Mom's sympathetic nods kept track as Verity recounted all the times she'd been hurt playing with Dad. She said she never wanted to go skiing again.
Suddenly, I remembered that was exactly what I said after my first day skiing. I was older than she, but I was cold, wet and sore. This was part of the ski experience, too. This is skiing. This is life. Maybe I had given her something valuable, after all.
Teaching a child to ski may be a parent's idea, but the child has to decide to keep it up. I threw on my scarf.
"Maybe tomorrow you'll want to try that old rope tow again," I said, and headed back to the slopes.
The next morning Verity was clawing at my bed to go skiing. No more rope tow, she declared. So, for an hour we slid down the little bumps of the practice area.
Our next ski outing was to Wintergreen, which proved to have a very different approach to teaching kids. We arrived slightly before 9 a.m. at the Kids Treehouse building and filled out forms for the Snow Cats program.
Snow Cats is one of Wintergreen's specialized curriculums, in a program that is rated among the five best in the country, according to Family Circle Magazine.
The indoor staff of 20 started Verity and her group of 6-year-olds clomping around in ski boots doing arts and crafts. At 10:30, the kids were turned over to the outdoor staff, 10 kids to a group, balloons waving over little wooly caps.
The instructors knew each child's name. They coaxed them into sliding trains and into bunnies hopping from ski to ski. They played Simon Says and London Bridge where they had to stand up from lying flat on their tummies.
Forty minutes into Verity's lesson she had done two pizza slices, for a total of 20 feet. They practiced one at a time, waiting turns. The kids stretched the fabric of order around them. Lines were breaking down. Kids made snowballs. Instructors worked with the interested ones.
The indoor staff got them again for hot cocoa, a hot lunch, dessert and Jungle Book video. As a parent I was most impressed that each of the 70 children had his or her footwear on the right feet.
I asked program director John Shand, 23, about Wintergreen's gentle combining of ski school and day care.
"We want kids to learn the sport but our priority is fun, to the point of bringing a child in if he or she isn't happy outside. The games make them forget they have 3-foot boards on their feet; it takes the fear out of them."
Making skiing a game, though, means youngsters progress slower. Midway through the hourlong afternoon lesson, Verity's class learned to stop. By then, Snow Cats had become a game to her. She seized the role of assistant instructor in her pretend classroom. I didn't interfere. It was healthier than eating snow.
At 3 p.m., parents took their Snow Cats out to see them strut their stuff. Most of the kids went eagerly, but Verity wouldn't budge from her paints for Dad.
But it was worth it all the next morning. She did pizza-perfect runs on easiest-rated Potato Patch and I got to shoot all the video I wanted.
\ AUTHOR David Barudin lives in Roanoke and writes on skiing for a number of publications.