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News
It’s officially summer time, and for many local
children, that means going to camp and making a potholder in
crafts class for Mom. For some Ruidoso kids, it means breaking
out your long johns, winter coat, snow pants and ski gear.
Several members of the Ruidoso Ski Team left Wednesday, May
26, for Piesendorf, Austria and two weeks at ski camp.
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Photo by Mark Doth
| Kermit Baumann, Casey
Cultreri, Lexie Doth, Travis Ingels and Stefan Seigmann will
all spend part of their summer honing their downhill ski
racing skills. They will join racers from around the world as
they train on the Kitzsteinhorn glacier.
Since 1993,
Ruidoso ski team coach Hubert Seigmann has been sharing his
home country of Austria with junior racers from around the
world. Each summer, he hosts two ski camps where he teaches
the now-famous “Alpines Grundverhalten,” or Austrian Alpine
Movement Patterns, to young competitors.
“We’ve trained
kids from throughout the United States, Europe and Japan,”
said Seigmann. “The Alpine glaciers get snow year-round, so
it’s the perfect place to come during the summer.”
In
fact, since Seigmann’s arrival several weeks ago, the weather
has been cold and rainy in the lower elevations.
“We’re
skiing on fresh powder in the mountains. I can’t remember ever
having better snow conditions in May.”
The snows have been
so heavy, that the road to Hitler’s Eagles Nest, just a short
drive away, has been closed for the past week.
At camp, the
young skiers follow a rigorous schedule that begins daily at
6:30 a.m. They are on the snow, ready to train by 8 a.m. They
work through the morning, finishing up their daily drills
around 1 p.m. Then it’s down the mountain for some free time
before dry-land training begins.
“We use a lot of
different activities to keep the kids in shape during the
afternoon,” said Seigmann. “We race with go-karts to teach
tactics and how to develop a good line. We play soccer to
build stamina. We do a lot of different things to keep these
athletes going, and to have fun.”
Fun is part of the
package when you attend a “Touch of Austria” summer ski camp.
Hubert Seigmann is helped by his wife, Lisa, in this
department. A fifth-grade teacher in Ruidoso, Lisa’s love is
history.
“This is the perfect place to bring kids in the
summer,” she says. “We don’t just tell them about European
history, we show them.”
Already, the skiers have toured
the chapel where the Christmas carol “Silent Night” was first
performed in the tiny Austrian town of Oberndorf in 1818.
“Attending ski camp is as much about learning another
culture as learning to ski,” continued Lisa Seigmann. “We
encourage the kids to try new foods, and to learn to
communicate in another language. People here in Austria are
always so impressed with the kids that we bring over
here.”
One of the big items on the travel agenda in June
will be a visit to the Normandy beaches, where the Allied
Expeditionary Force landed 60 years ago this month. The
Ruidoso skiers will camp on the beach one night during June,
and will tour the area.
During their stay, some students
may be e-mailing letters to the community, direct from Europe,
which will be published when received by the Ruidoso News.
For some of the young campers, the adventure started with
the arrival at the airport. Many of the junior racers had
never flown internationally.
One mother joked that her
child had never slept away from her before. From hiking in the
Alps to flying down the mountainside on ramped up skis, these
young Ruidoso kids are putting a whole new spin on “What I Did
For Summer Vacation”.
Copyright © 2004 Ruidoso News,
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