Ski and Snowboard Club Vail wins U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s ‘Snowboard Club of the Year Award’

U.S. Ski and Snowboard finally figured out what Ski and Snowboard Club Vail knew all along.

At the national governing body’s annual awards last week, Chris Laske was named snowboard development coach of the year as SSCV also claimed the Snowboard Club of the Year award for the second time.

“His leadership across that program — big mountain, freeski, freeride, snowboard, park and pipe — it was just really good to see him get recognition,” SSCV Chief Operating Officer Bryan Rooney said of Laske, the club’s freeski and snowboard director for the past nine years.

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“In our eyes, he’s been the best in class for a number of years here and it’s nice to see the rest of the country and U.S. Ski and Snowboard recognize that as well.” 

“Obviously, (I’m) incredibly humbled by it. It’s an honor,” Laske said. “But to be honest, the club of the year was way more important to me.”

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Laske called both awards “team awards.”

“I don’t know if I’d be getting this award if I didn’t have my whole team with me,” he added.  

After putting Kade Martin on the U.S. team two years ago, Laske guided Brooklyn DePriest, Hannah Norman and Evan Roble to the national squad last year. This season, SSCV produced two new nominees in Kade’s brother, Olllie, as well as Lily Dhawornvej.

“We put a couple more kids on the U.S. Team, did really well at comps — a lot of our top FIS kids won some of the big events — and we got a lot of podiums, so we ended up having a great year,” Laske summarized.

The secret has been “the effort our coaches put in every day,” Laske said. He emphasized communications, video analysis, trip planning and “being an overall team manager” in addition to the standard on-snow instruction.

“We run a pretty efficient program and have a pretty good stepping plan in place to have the kids progress from small, medium to large features and everything in between,” Laske said. The father of three has put some of his own sweat equity into revolutionizing athlete development, too. He called the recently constructed rail garden at VSSA a “game changer.”

“Our kids were pretty good at rails, but we would still get beat up pretty bad by Minnesota kids because they literally just hot lap rope tows all day long,” Laske said.

Three years ago, Laske bought a rope tow, cleared out trees, secured permits and invested in equipment.

“Now, we have a full-blown big rope-tow park,” he said. “You can get 100 hits in an hour.”

Season to remember

DePriest’s Junior World big air gold medal last March was probably the season’s biggest highlight.

“He’s really improved his mental game,” Laske said of the recent VSSA graduate. “He comes into these contests now with a lot of confidence and faith that he’s going to be able to land his runs. Once he started to get his mental game locked in, he started to be unstoppable because he could put runs down consistently.”

But DePriest’s season got off to a rocky start; he failed to land any of his seven runs in three period 1 World Cup starts.

“That was a really hard start to the comp season,” the 18-year-old told the Vail Daily earlier this spring. He said it was hard to not be “shell-shocked and starstruck” competing against snowboarders he idolized growing up.

“You might not be thinking about it, but it’s there. It’s in the back of your mind,” he said. “That’s kind of what happened to me. I wasn’t focusing on my riding.”

Through some self-reflection and conversations with coaches, he shifted his mind toward his individual riding. In winning the Junior World title, DePriest secured World Cup starts for the entire 2024-25 season. 

“It really kind of changes the perspective from ‘oh it’s lucky’ to ‘you deserve this spot,'” he said. “Now it’s time to really start thinking like a World Cup rider, with expectations and that mentality — yeah I’m going to land, I’m going to contend, I’m going to do well.”

It might not be long before Oliver Martin joins DePriest on the top international stage. The 15-year-old won Youth Olympic Games big air silver and was fifth in the slopestyle, but fractured his leg attempting a switch back triple 18 in February.

“Which is a pretty dang hard trick,” Laske said. “Not a lot of top pros in the world can do it.”

Martin is back in the swing of training now, Laske said; he joined SSCV at Mammoth Mountain for a recent spring camp.

“He’s just a killer on the jumps,” the coach said. “The kid has such air awareness that he’s doing World Cup-level tricks.”

Looking ahead

When Laske started at SSCV, there were 15 kids on his team. That number is over 75 now, including 40 full-time athletes. Additionally, Laske said he has a list of over 30 kids trying to get on the team for next year.

“Which is unheard of,” he said.

Big or small, Laske said his approach has always been centered around “providing every opportunity” an athlete needs to get to the next level, from the right off-season camps to appropriate competitions.

“It’s really just kind of picking out each kid and navigating the path that works best for them,” he said.

While in some ways, USSS finally gave Laske the public recognition he deserved, the national governing body has actually known all along what kind of a treasure he is to the sport. Last year, they offered him the head pro slopestyle coach.

“I decided to stay with the club because we’ve come so far,” Laske said. “I couldn’t walk away from it. … I felt so strongly about sticking it out and continuing to push as the leading program out there.”