Whitefish Mountain Resort Freestyle Team marks 25 years

The aspect of “freestyle” was nearly foreign in the world of skiing and snowboarding in 1996 — and definitely not a common practice at Big Mountain — but when the Whitefish Mountain Resort Freestyle Team got its start there was a growing need for a new approach for skiers.

At the time, skiers who needed an outlet after advancing past ski school only had the option of joining the race team, but with developments in the emerging sport the need was escalating quickly in the Flathead Valley to create the resort’s first freestyle team coached by Steve Knox.

Current WMR Freestyle Program manager and head coach Connie Parks recently recounted some of the history of the team as she reflected on the growth of the program over the years.

Parks said that in the first couple of years as a team, there were 22 freestylers involved, but that number has grown exponentially over the seasons.

The freestyle team has 16 coaches this year. In the last six seasons the team tripled its numbers from 57 athletes in the 2014-15 season to 122 athletes last year and now 152 team members this winter season.

Freestyle skiing and snowboarding consists of a skier or rider performing aerial flips and spins, and can include skiers sliding rails and boxes on their skis.

Parks says in order to be on the team skiers must be riding comfortably at an advanced level on all groomed runs across Whitefish Mountain Resort. The team accepts athletes ages 8 to 18 and holds a loose tryout in December each year.

The team sports various aspects of both skiing and snowboarding in an all inclusive curriculum, such as freestyle skills in terrain parks, big mountain freeriding and competition traiing. Not everyone on the team has a desire to compete either, over the nine years Parks has been coaching at Whitefish she’s helped open the team to athletes interested in progressing but not necessarily competing.

“We have a place on our freestyle team for all kinds of people,” Parks said. “We have a super broad curriculum and we have a little bit of something for everyone.”

“I kind of imagine it as this big giant hug for everyone that has grown out of ski school,” she continued. “It still gives them a place to come and continue to progress as a skier. Whether they want to just be a good skier or snowboarder when they’re an older adult or if they do want to compete in events and grow as a competitor — that for me I think is the biggest reason why our team has grown so much.”

The freestyle team also has a nonprofit partner in Whitefish Freestyle Inc. Managed by Knox, the nonprofit awards financial need based scholarships to athletes on the WMR Freestyle team every year. Parks says it also pays for preseason training and various event registration fees, subsidises travel fees, provides for coach education and hosts some team events among other things.

Whitefish Freestyle Inc. is funded through donations and the freestyle team’s annual fundraiser. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic is making it challenging to throw a fundraising event, the team plans to hold it virtually this year in order to keep funding scholarships for team members.

Parks believes the scholarships help make an expensive sport a little more feasible and inclusionary for local families.

“This year we had 10 scholarships come out of the nonprofit,” she said. “This sport is not cheap and I think any little bit helps. The fact that the nonprofit can offer financial need based scholarships is really great for those families to help subsidise the cost.”

Parks moved to Whitefish in 2012 and became the WMR Freestyle head coach. She has 15 years of coaching experience and previously competed in halfpipe before making the switch to coaching. Since coming aboard she’s developed the program to include dryland training which begins in September and also added aerial training which the team does prior to the season at Flathead Gymnastics Academy.

In the last 10 years, Parks, along with the other coaches, also developed the entire big mountain freeride aspect of the team. This increasingly popular form of freestyle skiing and snowboarding navigates away from terrain parks while athletes ride natural features such as cliffs, chutes, trees and steep slopes.

These additions, as well as the increasing number of people in the valley, has certainly contributed to the progression and growth of the freestyle team over the years, Parks noted.

Although competing isn’t necessary to be on Whitefish Mountain Resort’s freestyle team, it certainly is popular for many members. According to Parks, many kids start out competing at a banked slalom competition, which combines racing and freestyle. They then can decide if they’d like to take a competitive avenue within the sport.

“We are a competition-based team, which means we don’t make athletes compete but we do encourage it because it does help athletes grow,” Parks said. “I’m a true believer that any young person that is interested in being an athlete, it can only help them grow and develop if they put themselves in a competition.”

For the youngsters that are competitive, seeing the success come from previous freestyle team competitors — such as X Games medalist and Olympian Maggie Voisin or professional big mountain freeride skier Parkin Costain — can be highly motivating.

“I think for the kids that do see themselves at some point going that (competitive) route, it’s so cool for them to like see these other kids, really Maggie is in her early 20s and Parkin is a year behind her I think,” Parks explained. “I think it’s really good for them not just to follow a role model, but to be like those kids are from the same town as me and on the same freestyle team I’m on. It’s just one more perk of being on the team.”

Successful skiers coming out of the freestyle team doesn’t appear to be slowing down either. Parks said the team has four skiers that have moved on to train in Park City, Utah, to pursue skiing careers. They have athletes currently competing in both IFSA, a national freeride competition circuit, and USASA, which stands for the United States of America Snowboard and Freeski Association.

Last year the team had eight athletes competing regionally in IFSA for freeride competitions. Currently the team has 10 members traveling to compete in USASA freestyle competitions and four that qualified for nationals last year before it was canceled due to the pandemic. Parks believes one 16-year-old skier in particular, Connor Byle, would have a good chance of winning nationals if it were taking place this season.

“One of our senior athletes, Connor, is just so talented,” Parks noted. “He is throwing dub 10s (a move of three rotations with two flips) on our jump hill, which is huge; so huge for a 16-year-old kid from Whitefish.”

Although competition statistics and seeing riders coming out of the team have successful careers is enjoyable to watch for Parks, just seeing kids grow up through the program is more rewarding than anything.

She believes in the positive effects participating in sports has on adolescents — skiing and snowboarding on the freestyle team in particular gives kids a place to go during the long winter months, offers them the ability to progress their skills on the mountain as much as they desire, and allows kids from various walks of life to become friends when they otherwise might not have even known each other at all.

“It’s so wonderful to see that we’re bringing the youth in our valley together where they otherwise might have never crossed each other’s paths,” she said. “I think that’s a really cool part.”

For more information please visit https://skiwhitefish.com/freestyle-team/