PSIA-AASI Eastern Region CEO Kathy Brennan and PSIA-AASI Education Development Manager Angelo Ross achieved long-term goals of earning advanced telemark instruction certification this spring. Kathy earned her Level II certification, and Angelo earned his Level III certification.
Kathy is also a Level III alpine instructor with a Children’s Specialist 1 credential, while Angelo is a Level III alpine, Level I snowboard, and Level I cross country instructor with Freestyle 1 and Children’s Specialist 2 credentials.
Here, the two talk about achieving their goals as part of the final installment of this season’s “Leveling Up” series.
Q: Kathy, why was this a goal for you?
A: It’s something I’ve had on my bucket list for a while, long before I took over the job as the Eastern CEO. As I traveled around and I talked to members, I would often say, “I’m working on my Tele II,” and was starting to feel like it was time to fish or cut bait. So I registered in October when we put out our calendar.
It’s a beautiful sport. I love the way it feels. We also have a really big culture of tele here that I wanted to be part of. It’s a great group of people. Being in this role and working with the Telemark Task Force and the Telemark Team, I was motivated to understand it so I could be part of their conversation more.
Q: Angelo, once you decide that you are going to do this at the beginning of a season, how do you make time to keep that arc?
A: You keep that commitment because the empathy side is recognizing that so many of our members doing this are part time. They have other full-time commitments. So how do you find the time and prioritize those pieces just like they do? For me, that included making sure that I read the technical manual, pulled up the performance guides and went through all of that, and recognized that I had to make the most of any time I had on the hill.
I also realized I’m in a unique position where I get to go to Fall Team Training and Midwinter Team Training, so I just took my tele stuff and the team was gracious enough to give me pointers and encouragement. I was able to take advantage of the resources that I have, but I also spent probably 75 percent of my season on teles and was really only on my alpine gear when I worked. To achieve this goal, my alpine skiing suffered, and next season I’m going to have to put in more work on that.
A: (Kathy): Like a lot of our members, I was kind of in a little bubble, and it required a lot of self-motivation. But also, as I was looking at the standards and looking at the technical manual, I was like, “Am I there? I’m not sure. What do I look like? How are my ideas coming across? Are they going to make sense to people outside my own head?” So, I’m envious that I didn’t have that community for myself.
Q: Kathy, from earning your Alpine Level III, what were the similarities from discipline to discipline and how did that help you?
A: Of course, the teaching skills and the people skills. The movement analysis is very similar between tele and alpine. There are so many of the technical fundamentals that are similar. It’s really the lead change that you’re adding in. And also where that separation occurs between the upper and lower body gets to be a little bit different. But beyond that, it’s a lot of the same skills.
Q: Angelo, what’s different, discipline to discipline?
A: The separation point between upper and lower body, as Kathy mentioned, is different. I think it’s hard for alpine skiers to learn to get the weight directed to the outside ski, because we have a tendency to try to do the separation at the pelvis, and it needs to be higher to direct the pressure to the outside ski higher in the body. That’s a real challenge, I think, and when you cross over from alpine to tele.
A: (Kathy): I think another real difference is the muscular effort that’s involved. It’s not just being in that tele, but for me, the amount of core that needs to be engaged to maintain equilibrium and allow my legs to work it. I’m much more tired at the end of my time on my tele gear than I have ever been in my alpine gear.
Q: Kathy, how do you build on this process as you continue to level up?
A: As I said to my group at the event, I’m a lifelong learner, so it’s never stopping for me. And as Angelo mentioned, that idea that learning another discipline made him stronger in his underlying discipline. That’s a big part of it. As we continue to grow and learn, we understand our sport better. So, when you get in that chairlift conversation with someone and say, “This is what I believe in,” you’ve got those experiences behind it that are going to help back it up. I encourage everybody to try it. Not only does it help improve your skills, it helps you to have that empathy with your students.
Read the other posts in the “Leveling Up” series:
Goals, Resources, and Good Advice
Meet ‘Doctor of Snowsports’ Josh Pighetti
Achieving Your Professional Goals as a Snowsports Instructor