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All photos courtesy of Aspen Historical Society A 75-Year Tradition of Excellence 1930's  The original Aspen Ski Club was built in 1938 and was located on South Monarch Street in Aspen. The U.S. discovered the national appeal of ski racing at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and it didn't take long for a group of visionary enthusiasts to organize a local ski club. In the winter of 1936-37, the Roaring Fork Winter Sports Club (later the Aspen Ski Club), led by Swiss engineer Andre Roch, organized as a group. They cut the first ski run on Aspen Mountain in the summer of 1937. The Club fundraised enough money to build the first rope tow and later a "boat tow" on Aspen Mountain. According to a 1997 Skiing Heritage article, " The tow opened on January 27, 1938 and operator Blaine Bray charged riders 75 cents per day." The run and lift allowed Aspen to host the Southern Rocky Mountain Downhill and Slalom Championships in 1939. 1940's  Dick Durrance at the starting gate ready to forerun the slalom of the Roch Cup in 1948. The National Alpine Championships were held in Aspen in 1941 and the Aspen Ski Club weathered the Second World War and found new members in the Corps of the famous 10th Mountain Division. Aspen legends Elizabeth and Walter Paepcke sowed the seeds of the town's resurgence as a ski resort by generating positive articles in the pages of Life and Look magazines. 1950's  Stein Ericksen of Norway (prior to his coming to Aspen to work), skiing in the FIS World Ski Championships in 1950. Aspen made it's international debut as a destination resort in the 50's by hosting the world's best ski racers at the FIS World Ski Championships in 1950. The Club led the way by pursing such high-profile ski races. Club President Frank Willoughby's belief was that the chief interest of the Club was to promote Aspen's economy through skiing. The Club continued to raise money through bake sales and spaghetti dinners so that the Junior Ski Team (whose members included Max and Keith Marolt and Gale "Spider" Spence) could compete at Junior Nationals. Aspenites also opened their doors to host visiting ski racers for local competitions. Thanks to the club, by the end of the decade, the word was out that Aspen was the place to go to ski in the Rocky Mountains. Funding our Growth 1960's  Aspen Ski club family membership card for local Shady Lane signed by Club Secretary Ruth Whyte from the 1964-65 ski season. The Aspen Ski Club became an official non-profit organization in 1965 and started a focused campaign to raise money to offset the increasing costs of winter sports. 1970's  1979 Roch Cup and Fred Iselin trophy winner Mike Farny shows off his hardware. By the mid-1970's, the Aspen Ski Club had grown to a total of 650 members and 160 ski racers with a holistic-sounding mission to develop racers with "the ability to confront the total self, both physically and mentally, in seeking excellence." The staff moved from volunteer to professional coaches. The emphasis was on local competition within the Club. The Aspen Cup Commission supervised each race. One local business would sponsor each race and have their name on the race bibs and parents served as volunteers and race officials. The Club offered both Alpine and Nordic skiing and some "hot dog" instruction was offered as well. 1980's  Team photo of the 1981 Junior Olympic Team. In the 70's and 80's local racers Dick Durrance, Dave Stapleton, Whit Sterling, Terry Morse, Andy Mill and the Tache brothers all made the jump to the U.S. National team and several of them competed in the Olympics. In 1989, Aspen added separate a new organization to start kids on skis named the Aspen Winter Sports Club. The AWSC offered recreational ski programs to almost 1,000 children named "ASK" or Aspen Supports Kids. The effort to create ASK was led by ski legend and long-time Club supporter Bob Beattie. 1990's  AVSC Nordic Ski Team in the 1990s. The Aspen Ski Club, the AWSC, Aspen Nordic team and Team Tiehack snowboard program all merged in 1993 into the Aspen Valley Ski Club (AVSC). The merger was designed to reduce the competition for scarce funds between the groups and develop an organization to serve the comprehensive winter sports needs of the Aspen community and the growing Roaring Fork Valley. The merger was a difficult one but AVSC finished the decade with a renewed sense of focus and purpose and the mission "to create opportunities for Roaring Fork Valley youth to engage and excel in winter sports." The New Millennium  AVSC Freestyle skiers Glenn Engelman and Zac Giammarrusco perform their patented double iron-cross backflips at the new freestyle venue at Aspen Highlands in 2005. Thanks to the generous donation of land by former Club president Tom Moore and the support of the entire community, AVSC moved into a new Clubhouse behind the Aspen High School in the year 2000. The Club moved to aggressively recruit local children from Latino households by holding information sessions in local schools, offering enhanced scholarship aid and bi-lingual program materials. AVSC went through it's most recent name change in response to the increased popularity of snowboarding and was rewarded when alumna Gretchen Bleiler won the Silver Medal in Snowboard Half-Pipe at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy. AVSC today leads the nation in winter sports inclusion. A record 615 children from low-income families throughout the Valley qualified for scholarships totaling more than $265,000 in 2010-2011 and for the past three years, 18% of AVSC participants have come from Latino households. In fact the Club was just awarded the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame's 2011 "Top of the Hill" Award for their outreach efforts. " We're building lasting relationships with families living here that have let a whole new generation of kids know that winter sports are the thing to do, " said Cole. "People have told their friends and neighbors and it's taken off." Recent scholarship recipient Monica Karen Alvarez wrote the Club saying, " thank you for helping people that need it, like me. It has been one of the most fun things I have ever done, thanks to you. I hope that your life is full of good things." The growth of the Club has mirrored the growth of the Valley. Today over 2,000 children ski and ride with AVSC. More than 1,500 are out skiing and riding for fun on the weekends and over 400 of them are competing on Club teams. That's almost a quarter of the public school age population of the towns the Club serves. AVSC now reaches more children from Carbondale than from the town of Aspen itself.  AVSC Adaptive Athlete Laurie Stephens (left) celebrates her silver medal at the IPCC World Championships in Italy in 2011. For AVSC, inclusion means reaching beyond able-bodied children and teens. In 2010 the Club launched a first in the nation partnership with the U.S. Olympic Committee to create the Paralympic Development Program - Aspen. The program provides year-round training to disabled alpine ski racers including military veterans looking to compete nationally and internationally as members of the U.S. Adaptive Ski Team. For the first time these athletes have the resources to train and compete year-round while also taking advantage of venues and coaching alongside their younger able-bodied counterparts. Growing enrollment is just part of the story, however. Along with becoming the biggest Club around, AVSC has also built competitive programs in five disciplines (Alpine, Freestyle/Freeride, Nordic, Snowboard and Adaptive) that are second to none. AVSC's legacy of achievement shines as brightly now as it ever has as recent results from Club athletes and alumni prove. In the past three years AVSC has placed four athletes on the U.S. Ski Team - Wiley Maple and Katie Ryan (alpine), Torin Yater-Wallace (freestyle/freeride) and Noah Hoffman (nordic). AVSC won the 2011 United States Ski and Snowboard Association's (USSA) Club of the Year award. According to USSA the Club was honored for "its strong athletic success this past year in alpine and adaptive, and for hosting major events from grassroots Marriott Junior Championships to the Audi FIS World Cup. The club's athletes had success at every level and in every sport, from the Marriott Junior Championships to the X Games and World Cup." |
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Contact Us | Privacy Policy | AVSC Staff Copyright © 2008 Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club. All rights reserved. Phone: (970) 205-5100 - 300 AVSC Drive, Aspen, CO 81611 Web Design by Riley Designs |
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