Snowboard class comes to Cedar Mountain

VERNON — The Burton Riglet PE Program was conducted during Ms. Michele Gonnelli’s Cedar Mountain Primary School’s Physical Education classes by five representatives from Mountain Creek. Tim Stone, Felipe Perez, Jon Nelms, Zach Koop and Betsy Brill used a recorded video and four learning stations in the school’s gym to teach snowboarding.
Watching the video, youngsters were able to hear and visualize rules, techniques and tips of snowboarding by Olympic experts Kelly Clark and Ben Ferguson. “Jump and freeze” seemed to be the mantra of the day. After the video presentation, the Creek staffers stressed fitness and warm-up exercises of jumping, stretching and balance in preparation of the four learning stations.
The Mountain Creek snowboarding program is in its third year of visiting the Vernon primary school to the delight of the primary graders, as well as, the Mt. Creek staff. Staffers manned four learning stations starting with a mat floor game that prepared children for the snowboard. Two stations worked with stationary boards, one extremely flexible, encouraged twisting and balance, the other board was equipped with foam blocks which also worked on balance. The final station was an actual snowboard pulled by the Mt. Creek staffers across the gym floor, simulating a board ride, only indoors and without snow.
As the video buzzed in the background, snowboarders whizzed down snow covered mountain as songs like the Monkees’ I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone created a super, fun fitness gym class.
At the end of the day, what’s better than fitness, happy, excited kids and staffers and perhaps learning a brand- new skill?