With prominent staff members moving on after last season, MVNSEF took the opportunity to take stock of our programs, compare them with others around the country, and identify the challenges faced and potential opportunities for improvement. The resulting plan for this winter includes some adjustments to the look of the Methow Valley Nordic Team; this post is an effort to provide some background to those changes.
As a nonprofit, MVNSEF uses its mission and vision to guide its actions. Our mission is to support a vibrant Nordic ski community in the Methow Valley, and our vision is that we strive to engage, challenge, develop and inspire all individuals in the community through exceptional Nordic ski programs and events.
For MVNT this means trying to accomplish several things through our programs. Foremost we want to create a place where kids thrive on snow. This starts with engagement: making easy access points for a range of skiers and provide multiple pathways for them to continue to engage with the sport as they grow and develop. Those pathways seek to challenge skiers in an appropriate manner but seek to recognize that there are diverse reasons skiers ski and continue to ski. Harnessing a skier’s motivation for the sport helps them to stay involved with the sport, and compound the benefits of their involvement, whether those gains are social, physical, mental, or from life skill or character development. There are a lot of different motivations for being involved in skiing and a lot of places that one can benefit from involvement.
It is no secret that sustained success requires a sustainable program model and economic realities play into this both locally and nationally. MVNT utilizes a mix of both paid and volunteer coaches to put on our programs and it needs to work for the considerations that effect their decision to coach. Among our various program types, we wanted the cost to reflect the amount of resources that go into it, while also maintaining low cost for entry-level programs. We recognize that skiing is cost intensive, and that increases in program costs will impact families. While our programs remain some of the lowest-cost in the country with an increase to program tuition, MVNSEF has budgeted substantially more for financial assistance this year. Financial aid can help with a skier’s costs for tuition, equipment, and travel; our program is need-based and uses formulas based on a sustainability standard for living in the Methow Valley – we want skiing to be a part of any child’s upbringing that wants it.
For entry-level, learn-to-ski and adventure and recreation focused-programs, we opted to shorten the season to more reliable times of year for snow. We felt this would create a better environment for skiers to thrive in the core activity for which they signed up! Options exist for a longer season as a skier grows older and/or their interest grows, and these can or will include dryland training depending on conditions.
For weekend activities like races, we provide coaching support to skiers. This is not incorporated into the cost for our entry-level programs (one of the ways we keep cost down for these programs), but is for other programs when we anticipate skiers at that level participating in those offerings. We hope this provides families with a range of ways to participate in skiing in a manner that helps their child to thrive on snow!
Price comparisons with top-25 ranked programs around the country:
Intro program (Ski Cubs equivalent)
Early Elementary (Arctic Foxes)
Late Elementary (Polar Bears)
Middle School (Prep Team)
High School (Comp Team and Adventure Program)
