Greetings Southern Alberta Clubs
It has been a successful inaugural season of the Built 4 Speed Event Series in southern Alberta. With 6 clubs participating in the series, this has to be considered a huge success.
Built 4 Speed (B4S) was born out of a desire to expand participation in competitive skiing in southern Alberta. After several years of thinking about what we could do to expand participation, a group of coaches from the region got together to dream up something new - something that would increase participation by local clubs. Cross Country Alberta, was quick to jump on board to endorse this as a provincially endorsed regional event.
The big idea with B4S was to create differentiated events - where some events targeted novice racers, and other events were open events. The idea was to allow kids just getting started to have a chance to compete with similar ability kids because every club has kids who are just getting started - and lets face it, they could use some encouragement if what we are really interested in expanding participation in our region in competitive sking.
So often in ski racing the event becomes about the kids who ski the fastest. B4S aims to do something a little bigger by making the event series about a 'team' event where every kid who participates earns points for their club according to their finish order - much like what happens at Nationals. The club with the most points at the end of the season is recognized as the B4S Event Series Champions. B4S also recognizes the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place clubs in the club aggregate award.
Clubs earning B4S event series banners will get to keep the banner until the final event of the series next year - in this way, the banners will travel around to various clubs. Each of the 4 highest point earning clubs will also receive a mini-banner to keep forever.
B4S was a huge success in achieving its aim of increasing participation of southern Alberta ski clubs in a regional development event. For the past number of years, participation in regional interclub events was primarily a two club affair in southern Alberta. During the 2013-14 season, 6 ski clubs participated and earned points for their clubs.
Here are the points
1st place - Foothills Nordic Ski Club - 2310
2nd place - Canmore Nordic Ski Club - 2200
3rd place - XC Bragg Creek Ski Club - 1568
4th place - Crystal Ridge Nordic Ski Club - 222
5th place - Calgary Nordic Training Group - 143
6th place - Alberta Biathlon Club - 52
Congratulations to all of the participating clubs.
There were many things that made this event series achieve its intended outcomes
- having two development events aimed at kids in their first two years of racing
- having two open events open to everyone
- having dedicated events where the B4S series was the sole focus - this happened in Okotoks, Calgary, and Bragg Creek
- having revenues generated from an event stay with the host club
see you all next winter!
Roy Strum
B4S enthusiast
