Senior Maddy Weber walks into her lunch period and sees her friend Leah Wickenkamp sitting at a table with ‘Ski and Snowboard’ written on a piece of paper. She wants to involve herself more with snowboarding so she decides to sign up for the club.
Senior Leah Wickenkamp started this club with her love to snowboard. She reached out to schools who already have a ski and snowboard club like Prairie Ridge and Huntley for advice on how to start up the club, so starting on Dec. 4, the club will be meeting every Wednesday after school and travel to Alpine Valley via bus. Students who join get a discount going to Alpine Valley.
“After reaching out to Huntley and Prairie Ridge,” says Wickenkamp, “I talked to our Activities Director Mitch Stengel about starting this club. He then partnered me up with Mr. Guardalabene.”
Physical Education Teacher Jacob Guardalabene had the similar idea for starting up a ski and snowboard club since he stopped coaching wrestling.
“I have been thinking about starting a ski club ever since I stopped coaching wrestling so I mentioned that to Mr. Stengel last winter. A few weeks later Mr. Stengel told me that he had a student that came to him about starting a ski club,” says Guardalabene, “That’s when Leah and I started working together to get this club off the ground.”
Realizing MCHS needed a club like this, Wickenkamp felt it was necessary to get the people who go to school here and like skiing and snowboarding to join.
“I know that there’s a lot of students at our school that ski and snowboard, and so I knew that we were going to have a big community that wanted to do this,” says Wickenkamp.
MCHS has had a ski and snowboard club that teachers that work here were in. For whatever reason, it just stopped.
“So starting this club back up, I hope that this carries on for a long time. So once I graduate, there will be students that have the same passion to keep this going,” Wickenkamp said.
Guardalabene has been having fun with starting this club and working with students like Wickenkamp by starting it from scratch.
“Alpine Valley has been great to work with,” says Guardalabene, “It has taken quite a bit of time to get the club started since we are starting it from scratch. It’s been a lot of emails and paperwork, but we are close to starting the fun part and getting on the mountain.”
Guardalabene isn’t concerned with weather and travel since Alpine Valley has a snow making system and hopes for overnight temperatures below 29 degrees.
“Alpine has a state of the art snow making system,” Guardalabene said. “As long as the overnight temperatures get below 29F they can make snow. So we are hoping for some cold overnight temps to get a good base down. Once Alpine gets a good base then we are in pretty good shape until around March.”
Once all the ski and snowboard club kids make it to Alpine Valley, they all have a great time doing a hobby they love and all have in common. Enjoying snacks and the snowfall, they also form bonds that will hopefully last forever.