RED Mountain’s Legacy Training Centre has been designated the National Ski Academy’s Official Western Canadian Training Centre.
RED announced last Wednesday that it has partnered with the National Ski Academy (NSA).
“The forefront of this relationship is to cement ourself as a leader in training facilities in the west, and by partnering up with a national ski academy, who is at the forefront and have been doing athlete development for 30 years, for them to recognize the opportunity here and to partner on it, really cements what we’re trying to do,” said Matt Henry, director of the Legacy Training Centre.
Skiers from the National Ski Academy, which is based out of Collingwood, Ont., will be coming to Rossland to ski at the Legacy Training Centre for the next three years.
“For them to go back to southern Ontario spreading the news, I’ll say, is very exciting for us,” said Henry.
The NSA runs a program similar to Red Mountain Academy, but whereas Red Mountain partners with the Seven Summits Centre for Learning to provide student-skiers with training and education, the NSA provides a full boarding school.
“That’s another angle that we’re going to be developing is that we have academy students coming from Ontario to train with our academy students, who some are local and others are international, so it’s a melting pot of academies,” said Henry.
Asked if the new designation has attracted new skiers, Henry said, “We’d like to think so and that remains to be seen.
“Word has already spread in southern Ontario. For instance, the Toronto Ski Club is now looking at us for 2017, next fall,” he added. “Part of the goal with this partnership is to put us on the map, so to speak.”