Kirkwood North America Junior Championships

The Big Mountain Team’s recent stop last weekend, 3/26 and 3/27, at Kirkwood, California helped solidify the pre-qualification for the team. With 100-plus inches of snow before the event, and non-stop snow and wind during the competition, organizers scrambled to put together a one-run event for the nearly 100 athletes on Sunday, 3/27.

Erik Hilb led the 12-14 year old boys with a ninth place finish followed closely by Jack Nichols in 10th, Kevin Nichols, 13th, Gabe Suszynski, 16th, and Colin Suszynski finishing 19th in his first big mountain competition. Anna Suszynski finished eighth for the girls, ages 15-17.

SSCV’s big mountain team will be well represented at the Junior Freeskiing World Championships next month in Snowbird, Utah, April 7-8, thanks to a great season and some outstanding results. Points are accumulated at each event on the Junior Freeskiing Tour, with the top 20 athletes in each age group pre-qualifying for the Junior Freeskiing World Championships.

Christian Nichols, Mathieu L’Esperance, Mitch Gilman, Erik Hilb, Jack Nichols, Kevin Nichols, Aidan Stege and Gabe Suszynski will be making the trip to Snowbird next month to compete on the tour’s last stop where the overall champions will be crowned after the final event. All 8 pre-qualified for Finals. Five more SSCV Athletes will travel to try to make the finals….Michael Thompsen, Grifen Moller, Kevin Gillie, Matt Kramer and Danny Niess.

Local skier Anna Suszynski will also join the team at Snowbird for Finals.

“Our team produced consistent results at every comp. This is a big group of athletes to pre-qualify given the fact that our program is so new,” said SSCV’s big mountain coach Garrett Scahill.