Youth Development
I think a lot of people think CXC is just the Elite team. While it’s true that we’re the most visible program, especially outside of the region, in reality we have programs spanning the whole development pipeline. We have a Masters Team, a Junior Development Team, Coaches Education and Certification Programs, an in-the-works Disabled program, and a very cool Youth Development Program. There is a significant amount of fraternization between the participants in the different programs. The Junior Development and Elite teams have camps together, the Elite are active in the Coaches Education, the Masters have the same coaching staff and race right alongside us at the Birkie, and we’re basically just one big happy family. I think that’s part of what makes us so successful…we all motivate each other.
It's all about the knee drive.
On Wednesday the Juniors and the Elite spent some time hanging out with our little brother/sister program, the Youth Development. It’s designed for kids ages 6-12. The Youth Devo program puts together sweet activities show these kids that skiing is fun. They’re the brains behind the hugely successful barne games that debuted at this year’s barne-birkie. With no snow in Stillwater in June, we spent the afternoon with a mass of energetic youngsters, doing a variety of dryland activities. Kids this age have a fairly short attention span, so we quickly rotated them through stations ranging from soccer and dead-ant-tag to hurdle drills and jumping mechanics. And afterward, the MN youth league (a partner program) treated them all to ice-cream at the local scoop shop. As I heard one of them say, it was “A perfect day!” Ok, that might have been in response to the ice cream…but they were all obviously having fun the whole time. And kids that have fun keep at it, which grows the sport, which is good for all of us. And plus, there really isn’t anything much more motivating that seeing a youngster loving sport just for the straight up joy of it. We all need that reminder once in a while.
Dead-Ant-Tag: When you’re tagged, you have to lay down a play dead until the other ants drag you back to one of the bases. Obviously, some are harder to transport than others…
Click Here!