Conrad Pridy promoted to the Canadian Alpine Ski Team

“It is with tremendous pride and enthusiasm that we announce that Conrad Pridy has been promoted to the Canadian Alpine Ski Team as Assistant Men’s Coach with the speed group. This is very bittersweet as Conrad has been a tremendous coach with the Club for the past 4 years and contributed significantly with numerous memorable video productions. Unfortunately, Hollywood will have to wait. Conrad is and always will be a true pillar of our organization.

He will be sorely missed by all of us. His accomplishments while at WMSC are significant and certainly did not go unrecognized by the National Team. We wish Conrad all the best on his new endeavour and can’t wait to see his successful coaching career take flight on the World stage.”

Bob and WMSC Team

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End of the year Coaches’ gratuities

This year, the Club will cover the contribution towards our coaches’ year end gratuities.

Hello everyone and I hope this note finds you all safe and healthy! I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone for your unwavering support and patience throughout this most unique and challenging season.

I especially wanted to say thank you to the racers who listened to me each and every morning reminding them to wear their masks and stay apart. Your respect and good humour were appreciated. To each of you, I say thank you for doing your collective best to ensure that WMSC remained within the various guidelines to keep us operational for most of the season.

In the end, we pulled off a decent season with a tremendous amount of skiing and training accomplished even though we were not able to get any racing in.

I witnessed some awesome skill development throughout the year in every program. The perseverance and determination of all of our athletes is inspiring. I am sure there were points through the season where parents had to pull kids out of bed to get them going; let me assure you that once on hill, the engines started to fire up!

Thank you to all the Coaches who made this season a success and our Lead Coaches: Conrad, Drew, Henry, Mat and Richard who did their utmost to keep the programs both stimulating and engaging throughout the year. Dale, thank you for keeping our training center in phenomenal shape, your efforts never go unrecognized. To our office team led by Blanca and supported by Christine and Kevin, you are the reason we can focus so much of our collective time on our programming versus the operational elements of running the club!

To WB and their Team, a massive thanks for all you did for WMSC this season, we are so grateful for our partnership!
To our volunteers, sponsors, and the community of Whistler, thank you!!

To our Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, a massive thank you for your time and counsel.

As I pass the torch to Mike Janyk, I want to welcome him as the new Executive Director and wish him all the best. We are lucky to have Mike lead us and share his incredible wealth of knowledge as a former World Cup racer representing Canada, three-time Olympian, WMSC alumni and most recently leading a successful program at Grouse Mountain Tyee Ski Club with 300 plus racers aged U8-U21 and 50 coaches.

I will be to be staying on with the Club and working closely with Mike, supporting him both thru the transition and in the ongoing evolution of the club into the future.

Over the next several weeks Mike will be getting oriented and starting to plan what lies ahead for the season, including possible summer programing options depending on provincial health restrictions.

In the meantime, check your email later next week for our year end video where we get a chance to say thank you and present our annual awards.

Bye for now and see you around town.

Regards,

Bob

Hello everyone and I hope this note finds you all safe and healthy! I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone for your unwavering support and patience throughout this most unique and challenging season.

I especially wanted to say thank you to the racers who listened to me each and every morning reminding them to wear their masks and stay apart. Your respect and good humour were appreciated. To each of you, I say thank you for doing your collective best to ensure that WMSC remained within the various guidelines to keep us operational for most of the season.

In the end, we pulled off a decent season with a tremendous amount of skiing and training accomplished even though we were not able to get any racing in.

I witnessed some awesome skill development throughout the year in every program. The perseverance and determination of all of our athletes is inspiring. I am sure there were points through the season where parents had to pull kids out of bed to get them going; let me assure you that once on hill, the engines started to fire up!

Thank you to all the Coaches who made this season a success and our Lead Coaches: Conrad, Drew, Henry, Mat and Richard who did their utmost to keep the programs both stimulating and engaging throughout the year. Dale, thank you for keeping our training center in phenomenal shape, your efforts never go unrecognized. To our office team led by Blanca and supported by Christine and Kevin, you are the reason we can focus so much of our collective time on our programming versus the operational elements of running the club!

To WB and their Team, a massive thanks for all you did for WMSC this season, we are so grateful for our partnership!
To our volunteers, sponsors, and the community of Whistler, thank you!!

To our Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, a massive thank you for your time and counsel.

As I pass the torch to Mike Janyk, I want to welcome him as the new Executive Director and wish him all the best. We are lucky to have Mike lead us and share his incredible wealth of knowledge as a former World Cup racer representing Canada, three-time Olympian, WMSC alumni and most recently leading a successful program at Grouse Mountain Tyee Ski Club with 300 plus racers aged U8-U21 and 50 coaches.

I will be to be staying on with the Club and working closely with Mike, supporting him both thru the transition and in the ongoing evolution of the club into the future.

Over the next several weeks Mike will be getting oriented and starting to plan what lies ahead for the season, including possible summer programing options depending on provincial health restrictions.

In the meantime, check your email later next week for our year end video where we get a chance to say thank you and present our annual awards.

Bye for now and see you around town.

Regards,

Bob

Dear Members,

I want to update everyone on our plans going forward for the next couple weeks.

It was our intention to begin outdoor sessions on the weekends with various forms of activity, ultimately wanting to stay engaged with our racers. As we started to research what our options were, infections from a new COVID variant started to seriously ramp up in Whistler, with many infections hitting the younger generation.

Yesterday I spoke with Dr. Fern von der Porten (Member WMSC, 2 kids) who is the Whistler Medical Director to get her perspective. She was very quick to say NO, not a good idea for anyone to be gathering in our community at the moment. She said “Whistler currently has a very high number of COVID cases, including the Brazil variant. We are seeing young and healthy people becoming very sick and requiring hospitalization. Numbers are on the rise. Until we get a better handle on this next wave, I strongly recommend that we take a pause on our training and gathering. The safety of our athletes, coaches and community depend on it. In Ski Racing terms, this wave is the real thing: the first one was inspection, and the second one was a training run. This one is the real event. Time to use every skill we’ve learned over the last year. Every choice matters. Mask up and keep it very tight. This is a scary one.”

This recommendation from a leader in the Whistler community health care is clear and unambiguous. We feel the club needs to follow this advice at this critical public health moment in Whistler. In discussions with our WMSC Executive Committee , and the Lead Coaches. we have decided to suspend further in-person activities for the time being and look at other online or virtual programming we can offer our athletes in the meantime.

The Lead coaches will be sending out Zoom dates etc to get the ball rolling on engaging with the racers.

These are difficult times for all athletes, coaches, staff and membership. We need to band together to get to the other side of this pandemic in a safe and responsible way.

Regards,

Bob

Dear Members,

In light of the abrupt announced closure of WB for the remainder of the season, we want to ensure you that we are reviewing all opportunities available to engage with our racers.

Over the last couple of days Dale, Richard, the coaching team and I have been taking down all the nets on the training center and readying it for next season. Certainly not how any one of us had planned on ending the ski season!

As you all know the current Covid numbers in Whistler are not good. We want to support the community during this period and will therefore pause our activities for the weekend ahead. During this pause the Lead Coaches, Richard and I will spend the time to develop a game plan going forward for April.

We will have a program and each Lead coach will send out a communique early next week in their weekly update.

We appreciate your patience as we determine the best plan for our athletes going forward.

Regards,

Bob