Open program DIANN ROFFE talks Junior development

Coach and Olympic & World Champion Diann Roffe shares her vision of development.

Diann Roffe retired from ski racing in 1994, capping off her career with a gold medal in the Lillehammer Olympics and a victory in her final World Cup race. She left the elite level of ski racing at the top of her game, but she never left the sport. 

Now, Roffe is starting her 5th year at the helm of Burke Mountain Academy’s junior program, an endeavor she took on and designed with former USST teammate Felix McGrath. Together, they hoped to create a program that was both high-level and accessible. 

It took them two years to assemble the current model, which has flipped participation from more than 80 percent out-of-state weekend skiers to more than 80 percent full-time local Vermont skiers in just two years. Roffe has well-informed thoughts on what it takes to develop young ski racers. 

THE BACK STORY

Roffe grew up skiing at tiny Brantling, NY, then attended BMA, where she became World GS champion at age 17 while still a high school student. She went on to win Olympic GS silver in 1992 and Super-G gold in 1994. After retiring, she earned her PSIA Level 300, led various women’s clinics and started coaching.  As head women’s FIS coach for NYSEF, she also guest coached for the US Women’s D Team as young athletes Resi Stiegler, Lindsey Kildow (Vonn) and Julia Mancuso were coming up the ranks. In 2002, she started coaching at Ski Roundtop, PA, eventually becoming program director for 100 athletes and 22 coaches.

In June 2019, she signed on to Burke to run their junior program while McGrath was coming to Burke as sport director at the academy level, having been general manager of Baerums Ski Club and Donski Ski Academy in Norway. Together, they tried to replicate some of the magic of the Norwegian model that prioritizes the love of the sport, and combine it with the American love of competition. They envisioned a full-time program that utilized BMA’s infrastructure and allowed kids to live at home and attend their regular schools.

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THE STATE OF SKIING IN VT

When Roffe started, Burke’s junior program was largely comprised of Massachusetts weekend families. Their mid-week Devo program worked with only a handful of kids, whose training time eclipsed what was available to the weekend kids. Roffe’s goal was to flip that script to say, “The full program is our program, and then another option is the weekend program.” 

While BMA worked on structuring a seventh and eighth-grade academic program that utilized their classrooms and training venue at opposite times from the academy, Roffe set about meeting with the four local schools to get their support. Vermont’s “Flexible Pathways Initiative” encourages public schools to create personalized learning environments beyond the classroom. In addition to a collaborative spirit, the state provides a blended learning coordinator who lives locally and manages all the teachers’ work with the kids and tracks each student’s progress. If kids need to stay in class and catch up on schoolwork, the schools contact Roffe, who lets the family know. 

When asked if that takes up much of her time, Roffe is emphatic: “Not at all! I share our spreadsheet of our U12 and U14 calendars with the schools so they can see on a daily basis what the training is and when the kids are out of school. The parents don’t even really have to communicate because the schools all have access to the calendar.”

AN OPEN PROGRAM

“Felix really introduced me to the fact that you need an open program,” says Roffe, meaning it is open to all and not based on talent ID. At first, Roffe was skeptical. “Like many coaches, I was of the mind to separate groups by levels—put the best kids in their own group and then the next group that’s chasing them in the next group and keeping those kids together.” McGrath convinced Roffe that while parents may want that to happen, kids really just want to be with their friends and have fun. “In separating the best kids out of a group, you miss out on the kids who are working so hard to keep up,” she says, “and you don’t get that positive social group that you want.”  

On the hill, that social element translates to a positive energy where kids push each other.  “You can’t be that kid that wants to go inside and be done for the day,” says Roffe. “The kids want to be out there with each other and they realize they love to ski. It takes the stress out of the environment.”  Furthermore, says Roffe, “It’s like you’re gaining another coach because suddenly you have this rat pack of kids that is just moving fast and excited and animated. Felix got that right. The social environment matters more than your technical, strategic program planning. I still do that, but the social piece alone is like money.”

HOW IT WORKS

Kids enrolled in Burke’s seventh and eighth-grade academic program eat breakfast at home and head to school with a bag lunch.  They attend their classes until lunchtime, then grab their gear in the locker room and head to the mountain, where they meet up with the kids who attend other schools. Everyone eats lunch together in the lodge and then goes to training.

Nearly 50 U12 and U14 kids are now in the full-time program and ski up to six days per week. Some families move to Burke for the winter, while others are local kids with a more straightforward pathway to participate full-time. 

Vermont also helps support development by delaying the start of the racing season for U14 and younger until January 15. That allows the weekend programs to get up to speed before the racing season starts and means all kids get more training and less racing than in neighboring states. Roffe explains, “We had 25 days on snow in December alone, freeskiing and training without the distraction of races.”   

THE FUNDAMENTALS

Foundational to the junior program is its connection up through the development chain. “We work really hard to understand what is going on with the academy and then work backward. The strategy, philosophy and technical statement have to be connected so that when the kids start in my program, they also understand the language that works at the academy.”  For U14s and under, Roffe focuses on drills that free up the feet and secure dynamic balance, that foster a quiet upper body and are appropriate for young bodies with less strength. The ideal drills naturally put them in the proper position: hips up and square rather than down and back, as often happens on large-sidecut skis. That helps them release the turn and experiment with decreasing edge angles to increase flow. 

Roffe tracks her U12s to ensure they are freeskiing at least 20 percent of the time, all season long.  “We’re freeskiing before and after training, and our kids don’t just ski. They freeski hard.”

They also send kids out on GS skis in difficult terrain, spend as much time as possible in moguls, and spend lots of time skiing on one ski, in and out of gates and stubbies, and as part of a warm-up.  “We make the kids adapt, figure it out, and don’t talk about it much.” Roffe’s vision at Burke includes a designated terrain area with a spine and various-sized rollers. “That will be a real differentiator if we can do that weekly.”

RACE PREP

Roffe’s program also preps the kids for races by creating pressure environments within the training sessions, complete with random bib order, starter, finisher, video and timing.  “We do a race practice day where we really don’t even coach them. Their job is to go up, inspect and be on time.” Coaches set three different courses throughout the session, always with some traps to encourage kids to inspect well on their own. “By the time we get to the first race, we are so on fire,” says Roffe.

AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF TECHNOLOGY

The program also utilizes Pro Turn IO–a GPS tracking system (like what is used for F 1) that uses a small device in the bib to track acceleration and deceleration in measured sections. They do not, however, share the info with the kids or the parents. Instead, they coach from the information it provides. In conjunction with the daily video, the information helps kids understand line and how edge angle affects speed.

Roffe and head U14 coach Terry DelliQuadri initially resisted the technology–“We’re old school,” Roffe laughs–but soon embraced it as a coaching tool. They also noticed an unexpected bonus. Even while working on their specific focus on a typical training day, when the kids knew they would not see their times, their intensity and pace soared. “How they push out of the start, how they ski through the last gate–they never skied out!” says Roffe. 

STAFFING UP AND EMBRACING PARENTS

For 20 U14s, Roffe has one full-time head coach and one assistant, supplemented by part-time set-up assistants and a slew of volunteer parent coaches. While some programs shy away from having parents on the hill, Roffe finds them invaluable at this level. “The volunteer coaches have been a really important thing for me. They are treated like employees and have the same expectations as employees.” Specifically, they must coach everybody, not just their own kids, or she won’t allow them to be on the hill. “You just have to express that up front.” 

THE COST

The full-time U12 program, which includes weekends and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes Fridays, is $3,500. Though the cost is in line with or less than comparable programs across the country, there is a significant jump into the seventh and eighth-grade U14 program and its year-round athletic programming. The full-time program is $10,000 for the skiing piece, and just over $20,000 for the school and skiing piece, with extra for summer camps. Weekend-only programs are still available through U16 and top out at $1,650. Once the season ends, contracts for the next season go out to anyone who has inquired. “We don’t pick the kids. It’s open until it’s full.” 

Whether kids go on to race at an academy or for their high schools, Roffe sees her responsibility to them as the same. “Our job as coaches is not to pick out the best kids and only coach them. That’s easy. Our job is to take every athlete who wants to ski race, regardless of their level, and coach them to improve. Every athlete should be able to improve from point A to point B every season. That’s our job as coaches.”