I am one of the U10 parent reps at my son's race club, and am serving on a committee this summer looking at creating standard operating procedures for the club and guidance documents for parents as to how we might operate next season during likely COVID19 restrictions. As I told the club president, I am for optimistically working under the assumption that the hill will be open in some form, and we need to proactively figure out how we would operate the race training program in that context. Admittedly the worst case scenario is that there is no race training at all, but I think at this point it is in best interests to assume there will be skiing in some modified form and we need to be plan how to make that happen.
Clearly a part of that plan will be subject to national and provincial/state bodies like Alpine Canada, etc. That is in particular true when it comes to how we might operate races (although my bet is that we all have to adapt and just stay within province/state for races next year, but hopefully I am wrong).
I am wondering though if other clubs have started looking at the day-to-day practical side of actually running training days. We have a meeting on this in two weeks, and I will be happy to share our discussions with others if they are interested, and equally I am keen to learn other club's thoughts as well. We are trying to think through lots of things like whether we should decrease training group sizes (i.e. decrease ratio) or not, if so can/should we hire more coaches or simply decrease allowable registrations, only allow the kids to use the t-bar (one at a time) and not a quad lift, should we not allow kids access to the race club shack, etc etc etc
My bet is that in order to operate at all we will need a waiver from public health, and as part of that I would bet we will need a well thought out (and approved) SOP for operating the club during COVID19. Happy to hear other clubs thoughts and to share our own!
Clearly a part of that plan will be subject to national and provincial/state bodies like Alpine Canada, etc. That is in particular true when it comes to how we might operate races (although my bet is that we all have to adapt and just stay within province/state for races next year, but hopefully I am wrong).
I am wondering though if other clubs have started looking at the day-to-day practical side of actually running training days. We have a meeting on this in two weeks, and I will be happy to share our discussions with others if they are interested, and equally I am keen to learn other club's thoughts as well. We are trying to think through lots of things like whether we should decrease training group sizes (i.e. decrease ratio) or not, if so can/should we hire more coaches or simply decrease allowable registrations, only allow the kids to use the t-bar (one at a time) and not a quad lift, should we not allow kids access to the race club shack, etc etc etc
My bet is that in order to operate at all we will need a waiver from public health, and as part of that I would bet we will need a well thought out (and approved) SOP for operating the club during COVID19. Happy to hear other clubs thoughts and to share our own!