THUNDER BAY – Members of a local skiing club are flying high, and landing softly, thanks to a new piece of training equipment that is the first of its kind in Thunder Bay.
The Thunder Bay Freestyle Ski Club is now training with an air bag set up at Loch Lomond Ski Area, and members were testing out some new tricks on Sunday.
“It’s actually pretty awesome,” said 15-year-old Shaelynn Moorman. “I’ve done some things that I wouldn’t expect myself to try just because it’s here.”
Moorman has been with the club for two years and she said having the new air bag to train on will not only be fun, it will also help members of the club build confidence and skill.
“If you are just trying something on the snow and you fall, you are probably going to hurt yourself, or at least not feel as good as landing on an air filled mat,” she said.
“It was a big deal, especially for Thunder Bay,” added 16-year-old Tateum Cava, who has been with the club for the last three years. “Having something like this is a huge deal for progressing our skiing and getting better all around at our tricks. It’s a nice safe way to learn and a good thing to have for our club.”
Thunder Bay Freestyle Ski Club coach, Kevin Bunzeluk, said members would have to travel to Quebec or Southern Ontario to practice more difficult jumps, but now they can do it right here at home.
“Besides the safety issues, Freestyle Canada requires you to be certified you to do flips, so they need to actually qualify on this before they can complete their flips on snow,” he said. “Normally they wouldn’t have that opportunity.”
Bunzeluk added the air bag, which will be a permanent fixture in the club, will also allow the members to train in the summer.
For Moorman and Cava, training on the air bag is a little less stressful than training on snow, which is what the club had to do before its arrival.
“We just went off smaller jumps with our tricks to try at first, and as we got better at them, we would go off bigger jumps,” Moorman said. “But there are no really medium-sized jumps here, so you kind of have to go from small to giant, so that’s why the mat is really useful.”
Cava added training without the air bag was a challenge, because you had to either do something, or not, and finding out you cannot would be a difficult lesson.
“You just kind of have to try and commit,” he said. “When you hit snow really hard on a fall, it’s basically like hitting concrete, it hurts quite a bit. Having this is so much better.”
As other skiers watched the members flip, twist, and soar through the air, Bunzeluk admitted the Thunder Bay Freestyle Ski Club may see a bump in membership.
“Yesterday we just set this up for the first time and we’ve already had other kids approaching me asking how they can try it out and get involved,” Buzeluk said. “So I think it will help build some awareness about what we’re doing and get some more people out.”
