Freeski & Snowboard Trip Recap: Landgraaf, Netherlands

SnowboardSki

Oct 20

At the end of September, select members of our freeski and snowboard teams travelled to Landgraaf, Netherlands to get some early season on snow experience and compete for some FIS points in a preseason slopestyle and rail jam competitions.

The trip began with a quick layover in Brussels, Belgium where the team enjoyed beautiful sights, stunning architecture, and delicious food. They even got a glimpse of the famous peeing baby statue “Manneken Pis”. The city of Brussels was alive and an amazing place to explore for the day.

Despite battling jet lag, the team made the quick drive over to Landgraff and immediately hit the slopes at Snowworld. Snowworld Landgraff is an indoor snow hill open from 9AM-10PM with a hotel attached, making it the perfect place to maximize training time.

Skiing indoors was a new experience for many of our athletes. One athlete said, “I found it interesting to ski inside on artificial snow. The snow was mixed with sand which made it a lot thinner and felt a lot different then skiing on normal snow. It was really nice to get an early start on snow this year and scrub off the rust early so that when the winter semester comes along I am 100% ready.” Another student said, “ It was my first time skiing in an indoor facility and I was definitely impressed. The park was very fun!”

After a few long training days, our students were ready to compete! Our athletes participated in 3 different FIS events: two slopestyle events and a rail jam. The ski squad was able to land on the podium for all three events. The snowboard squad had a solid performance but the competition showed up. Snowboarders were able to get into 2 finals and barely missed the podium.

To wrap up the trip the whole squad went out for one final rip before packing up and getting ready for the journey back to the states. It was great to see all the work athletes put in over the week pay off and end the trip with good fun and skiing and snowboarding for the soul. It was a great trip for the experience, the skiing and snowboarding, and to see what competition from that side of the world is like.