Ask any ski racer where they started and the answer is almost never a World Cup venue. It is a small mountain, a rope tow, and a Saturday-morning club with a coach who cared more about smiles than stopwatches. The Holiday Mountain Ski Club Program follows exactly that tradition — and its recipe is worth understanding even if your child never races a gate in their life.
The philosophy: safety and fun
The program’s stated philosophy is two words long, and the order matters. A child who feels safe tries new things; a child who has fun comes back next Saturday. Nothing else in the program — drills, gates, video review — works until those two are in place.
The goals, in order
- Develop skiing ability — fundamentals of stance, balance and edge control before anything else
- Make skiing a lifelong sport — the mountain’s own slogan, “where great skiers begin”, is meant literally
- Provide quality training — small groups, consistent coaches, a progression that matches each athlete
- Offer a path to competitive skiing — for those who choose it, not those who are pushed into it
What a training day looks like
Athletes meet their coach at a set point, warm up as a group on easy terrain, then split by level. Beginners work on the magic carpet and lower slopes; stronger skiers take laps on the triple chair. Drills look like games — following the leader, skiing over markers, one-ski hops — because a drill that feels like play gets a hundred repetitions while a drill that feels like homework gets ten.
Why fundamentals beat early racing
The temptation with a talented nine-year-old is to get them into gates immediately. But a young athlete who learns to carve a clean turn at seven can learn race tactics at twelve. The reverse almost never happens. That is why Ski Club emphasizes technique progression and lets competition arrive naturally, when the athlete chooses the path.
For parents
Equipment does not need to be new — it needs to fit. Boots especially: two sizes big “to grow into” teaches bad habits that take seasons to unlearn. The club can advise on used-gear swaps at the start of the season. For schedule and pricing, check the winter activities page or call the mountain office.