One of the things that is constantly raised at the club is queries from new parents and racers about where to start, what races exists, what their children should take part in etc. It’s a long list of questions and of course everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to find anything online and i have yet to come across a parent who has seen this information on the SSE site. But that doesn’t really help with the very basics (too many people that have been around in the racing for sometime forget that many things are not that straight forward), you need to take a couple of steps backwards and break down the information better.

One of the things we are trying to do this year at Ipswich is encourage more parents and racers to take part in the ERSA races and also the Club Nationals and increase that overall participation. There has been quite a bit of information going around the club recently.

This morning we had a session with parents about where to start, it’s something that we have been wanting to do for some time and finally got around to it today. Some were new parents while others have been around for a while but it was a very good session. The attached presentation is what I used as the basis and from that it generated a lot of other questions and discussions. It was well received even from the hecklers at the end of the room :)

It would be great if the SSE website had a good introduction to skiing starting right at the basics and moving up to the regional level, more on the grass roots, but that is missing. Some time back the SSE site was supposed to be update, who knows it maybe now but if it is not sure what they will put on there, presumably they will go out to members and solicit some feedback especially from those who are new to the sport. This morning was certainly interesting and useful from the questions raised by those present and there is sufficient information for us to do something ourselves.