Granville and Hancock Students Compete on Freestyle Ski Team
By Martha Slater

Next Sunday, Feb. 17, three Granville teens, Jack and Bob Stauss, and Sam Hewitt, and their friend Jozef Eller of Hancock, will be among those competing at a "slope style" freestyle ski and snow boarding competition at the Sugarbush Ski Area’s Mount Ellen.

Billed as the Presidential Big Air Open, the event will begin at 10 a.m. and is open to the public. Prizes will be awarded for top riders and skiers, and proceeds will benefit the Harwood Union Freeride Team.

The four boys, all students at Harwood Union High School in Duxbury, make up one-tenth of the 40 members of the team. Founded four years ago by Jack, now a senior, and his friends, Jamie Dillon and Thayer Maclay, the team is a club sport, so it gets no funding from the school and each member pays his or her own expenses. The team, which practices every Tuesday and Thursday at Sugarbush, is a pretty even mixture of snowboarders and skiers.

"We usually have three competitions each season," Bob Stauss explained. A sophomore, he says he got interested in the sport by watching his older brother. Their parents, Roger and Kate, are both downhill skiers.

"We do jumps, grabs (where you grab your ski while you’re in the air) and we also do rails (where you jump onto a railing and slide along it)," Bob said. "Right now, everyone competes individually, but we’re working on setting up an invitational competition so our team can compete against other schools. We’ve contacted Burr & Burton, which has a freestyle team like ours, and also Rice, which has a snowboard team."

Sophomore Sam Hewitt’s specialty is snowboarding.

"I like it because it’s fun and a little scary, so that makes it even more fun," he says. "I like learning to do things that no one else can do or things I couldn’t do before. I’ve been boarding for nine years and doing tricks for three years."

In addition to the regular practices two days per week, Sam also snowboards on weekends. He says he hopes some day to snowboard in Argentina and travel around Europe as well.

"I’m loving all the snow this year!" he says. "I like to do 360’s (one full rotation) and 540’s, where you do one and a half turns, and land ‘switch.’ That’s when you start with your right foot forward and land with your left foot forward. I learned how to do that at snowboard camp in Oregon this past summer. We were there at the end of July and beginning of August and went snowboarding at Mt. Hood, where it was like spring skiing."

Jozef Eller, also a sophomore, said that freestyle skiing "is really a personal thing. I like to ski how I’m feeling—to say something with my skiing. For me, it’s a form of artistic expression. When it’s being judged, it’s really more about the riders’ and skiers’ style and attitude than specific tricks."

In addition to the practice sessions at Sugarbush, Jozef often skis on weekends at the Middlebury Snow Bowl.

"It’s fun, active, and creative and it’s also a good way to relieve stress," he added. "Some people like to stick to what they know, but I like the feeling of being free and in the moment. You can’t worry about hurting yourself. I call it ‘defeating the beast!’"

Asked if he’d ever been injured, Jack noted that "it can get pretty rough. I’ve broken my elbow and the humerus bone in my arm, and I also dislocated my shoulder."

Jack loves to share the joy he finds in his sport, and acts as assistant to the team’s coach, Luke Catlin of Moretown.

"I think the older kids on the team should take on the role of leaders and coaches," he said. He’s looking at colleges located near ski areas, "so I can continue to compete and so I can help out with younger students, if I get the opportunity."

"The kind of skiing our freeride team is doing is more about personal style and testing new ways of doing things and innovation," noted Jack. "We do some aerial skiing—the jumps are a part of it—but it’s mostly about finding different styles and learning how to do all the maneuvers that you see the pros do."

Jack, who dreams of having a career related to his passion for the sport, concluded that, "what’s really cool about having our team is that kids of different interests, backgrounds and abilities all come together to practice and it’s a lot of fun to see the progression they make. We all learn from each other. Even if you’re more advanced than someone else, you can still learn from them—how to do your own trick a new way or how to teach someone else how to do it in the future."

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