It was a successful outing for local freeride skiers this weekend on the IFSA circuit.
U19 men's gold went to Kohen Tacilauskas, who scored 65.50 points and is now bound for the Junior Freeride World Championships in Kappl, Austria with fellow Whistler Freeride Club (WFC) member Tannen DesBrisay and alum Kayla Constantini.
Carden Tomic nipped at Tacilauskas' heels for silver (65.36) and bronze landed around the neck of Carter Durlacher (65.30).
Meanwhile, Mhairi Smart prevailed among U19 women (61.37) in a tightly-contested duel with Regan Beattie in the runner-up spot (60.34). Zahra Dimma completed the top three (59.93).
The U15 athletes in the field should not be overlooked either. Tavian Haddad (63.30) landed atop his podium, with Oscar Lennox-King (62.20) and Owen White (62.00) not far behind on the scorecards.
Indy Tomic (60.94) emerged victorious as the only U15 girl to break the 60-point barrier. Lina Palethorpe (59.23) did well to place second, with Quinn Phillipson (58.60) in third.
On Jan. 4, a day before their older peers dropped in, the U12s saw action. Their boys' podium was comprised of Jack Ross (30.20), Maverick St-Yves (29.73) and Benjamin Reid (29.33) in that order, while Emily Davies (29.00) bettered Momona Takada (27.23) and Nicole Gelfand (26.77) among girls.
"The overall performance level was one of the highest I've seen at a junior comp," said WFC coach and founder Derek Foose. "I was just so impressed with the skiing in general. It's very exciting from a coach's perspective, to see the whole club all together. The podiums kind of tell the story, but the kids who are getting set to go to Junior World Champs performed really well.
"Kohen is really confident, and Tannen [who finished 26th] was definitely showing that he's ready to perform on the world stage pre-crash. And the young athletes were unbelievable. The U15s got a special shout-out from the judges that in some cases they would have been on par with the U19s—which is pretty impressive."
A few snowboarders also took part in the U19 and U15 men's divisions, which were won by Ryan Gates (53.84) and Xavier Lamoureux (58.26) respectively.
"It's particularly nice that this was the first event of the year, because [the kids] don't have to travel. They can sleep at home. It's on terrain that they're familiar with," Foose remarked. "Everybody can come and watch, which is a benefit for most of the athletes. The pipeline is stuffed with talent: boys, girls, young and older. The average skill level is so much higher than it ever has been, and the passion I really attribute to the group of coaches we have."
He went on: "We recently had our annual freeride fundraiser, a time when I get to spend some time speaking to parents. They're all just absolutely blown away by how happy their kids are every single day that they've come home. Our number-one, overarching philosophy is creating lifelong, passionate skiers. Competition is a part of it, for sure, but [the factor] that stands over everything…is buy-in to what the coaches are delivering on snow."
Full results from Whistler are available here.
