Approximately 55 girls — including a handful from the local Tawatinaw Valley Freeriders — joined Olympic gold medalist Jennifer Heil on the moguls last weekend for the seventh annual Jenn Heil Girls Camp held in Jasper.
The two-day training session with Heil and fellow national mogul team member Chloe Dufour-Lapointe gave the girls a chance to hone their techniques on the slopes with some of the best in the world.
“It’s a way to encourage girls to stick with freestyle skiing and to see how far they can get in a sport that is mostly male dominated,” Tawatinaw Valley Freeriders president Toni Siegle said.
She added that girls came from all over the province to participate at the free camp this year.
The camp was started by Heil as a way to give back to the sport and to encourage more female skiers, Siegle said.
All the girls were divided into groups at the camp based on age and ability and then given the chance to work one-on-one with former national team coaches Dominic Gauthier and Murray Cluff.
“Each group gets to experience more than one coach,” Siegle said.
Siegle registered both her daughters for the camp and said it was a great way for them to learn while having fun.
For 15-year-old Kara Siegle getting the opportunity to work with Heil and Dufour-Lapointe was a dream come true.
“It’s so cool because you get to train all day and they tell you what you need to work on. They taught me how to improve my speed on the moguls and how to use more absorption,” she said.
Having strong role models like Heil and Dufour-Lapointe at the camp was also inspiring.
“They were both really nice and down to earth,” Kara said.
Emma Siegle,12, said it was a rare chance to try new moves and learn new techniques.
“In Tawatinaw we don’t really have high level coaching and there we did. We also got to experience different types of moguls too which was nice,” she said.
“It was an amazing weekend, I had a fantastic time. I would definitely go again,” Kara added.
