With the sliding season officially over, I wanted to take a moment and
pass along my thanks to everyone for making the 2007 season a
successful effort. At the track, everyone arrived promptly, was
courteous to the coaches and track workers, and treated each other
with the kind of support, respect, and camaraderie that I've come to
expect and appreciate in our club.

Off the track, I recently was our club's representative for the annual
Peer Review. In order to maintain our status as a Sporting Club under
the USLA policies, we have several requirements that we need to meet
annually and these are jointly reviewed by our sister clubs and by the
USLA. It may seem odd, but none of the requirements for us as a
Sporting Club require that we actually slide on the track (though
that's the primary activity we all enjoy.) However, in return for
that very unique privilege we have to give something back to the sport
we all enjoy. Fortunately, all the things we're asked to do are
enjoyable and rewarding on their own.

I won't go into the full set of requirements here (there aren't too
many), but I want to highlight a couple that were noted as areas for
the Adirondack Luge Club to improve upon. Specifically, these would
be a summer or winter recruiting camp, and our roster of certified
coaches.

I'll start with the coaches. This is a critical element for our club
and I will be pushing on this hard. I'll also lead by example, as I'm
beginning my coach training now and I will be encouraging many to
follow along with me.

We have in the past been able to offer club membership to established
coaches, such as Duncan, Pat and Pete, but that is generally not the
spirit in which the USLA policies are written. We should be
developing and maintaining our own coaching staff.

Now, understand, club coaches are not intended to be a replacement for
the USLA coaches we have at the track. The coaching course is very
basic, and certainly none of us have the depth of experience that
would replace our USLA coaches. Instead, we are an adjunct to the
coaching staff. I'll explain what's required to be a coach, and then
I'll explain how that's used.

To be a coach, you need to complete several requirements. These are:

USA Luge National Officials Course
ASEP Coaching Principles Course
USA Luge Coaching Course
CPR Trained
First Aid Trained
16-hour Coaching Internship

Let's look at these in order.

The USA Luge National Officials Course is a weekend course, and it
will be given in the fall. The date and location are currently being
discussed, but I encourage EVERYONE who can make it to attend. It's
a great way to add support to the sport, a fun weekend together to
reconnect with Luge folks during the off-season, and it opens the
doors for some very interesting opportunities during the season.
It's also a prerequisite for the FIL International Officials course,
which allows you to officiate at the World Cup meets. With World
Championships coming to Lake Placid soon, I highly recommend that we
move forward in this area. Ask someone who's an official. It's not
difficult to become, and I see them having a lot of fun doing it.

The ASEP Coaching Principles Course is a sport non-specific course
that can be taken online at your own pace. The online course costs
$95, and the Adirondack Luge Club Board voted last year to reimburse
this cost to any member that completes their coaching certification.
(Not just the course, but the whole deal).

The USA Luge Coaching Course is a weekend class given in Lake Placid.
It teaches you the basics of how to teach luge in the "USLA way". It
also will give you the tools to help evaluate and promote the sport
with young slider candidates. You'll understand how the USA Luge
program evaluates talent, and you can more fully appreciate what they
might find attractive in a young slider. It'll also make you a better
slider, for sure.

The CPR and First Aid training are basic emergency skills – you can
pick these up from your local Red Cross or other organizations
independently. Of course, these are never a bad idea.

The 16-hour internship is the hardest obstacle, but it's not
insurmountable. This involves working with the coaches, while they
coach, to see what they are doing, how they work, and to fine tune
your skills. This can be served during sliding sessions at the
track, during Slider Searches, or wheel and start clinics. For
example, if we're sliding club sessions on Saturday nights, internship
time could be picked up during the mornings when the junior
development team is sliding. You could pick up nearly 16 hours by
simply attending a Verizon Slider Search and helping out in that
capacity for a weekend. I think the options are only limited by your
creativity and schedule flexibility.

Let wrap up this topic this way…

Our future status as a club REQUIRES us to have a cadre of coaches,
trained and current. We're supposed to have 5, and frankly, I think
we can do it. The payback for us, as individuals, is that we will
become better sliders, and we will produce a more vibrant club – of
that I have no doubt.

Please, consider this strongly. The journey will be worthwhile, and
it will be easier if several of us head down this path together.

The other item we need to work on is to hold a winter or sumer
sreening camp. In the past, Paul Ottenti used to hold screening
camps for the club, but he's no longer involved. We did a spectacular
job supporting the Ridgefield, CT Verizon Slider Search last year
(thank you BRETT!), however that was a USA Luge event, and not really
in the spirit of us doing an independent camp as a club. It was,
however, a great training exercise.

We need to hold an event of some kind, intended to introduce the sport
to at least 25 young sliders, and to train them and select some for
follow-on evaluation by the USA Luge coaching staff. We are required
to recommend 5 young athletes, twice a year, for further national
screening (Sept30 and Mar 31). This is a great way for us to identify
potential new sliders, and frankly, new club members.

Our ability to do this, and do it well, will depend on our clubs
assets and resources. One primary resource will be coaches, which
brings up back to the prior discussion.

We will be examining and planning for events such as this. If you
have any ideas, especially if you're willing to get involved, please
let me or a member of the executive board know.

Thanks for all your support. I'm very proud of our club, and I can
really see that we are poised to take this to a new level and be a
model club for the others to aspire to.

Through and Down,
Murph