As part of its new social media strategy, BC Alpine recently hired two “Social Media Interns” who are tasked with helping publish interesting content on a regular basis. Stef Fleckenstein (@stef_fleck), a Whistler Mountain Ski Club and BC Ski Team alumna who is currently racing World Cup with the International Ski Racing Academy – and Molly Raymond, an up-and-coming racer from the Okanagan Ski Team and Apex Mountain Ski Club, are ready to roll.
BC Alpine is pleased to announce that Dustin Koepke has accepted the BC Ski Team Assistant Coach position and is expected to hit the ground running at the end of July when he joins the team for a dryland block in Whistler.
Koepke lives in Lake Country, BC and has been coaching BC athletes since 2007. He started at his home club of Big White as a seasonal coach for 13 to 17 year-old racers. In 2014 Koepke began a 3-year stint with the Grouse Mountain Tyee Ski Club managing the U16 program. In 2017 he moved to the Okanagan Ski Team as Associate Head Coach of a large group of U19 athletes. This led him to his most recent role as Head Coach of the Vancouver Ski Team for the past two seasons.
Dustin comes to BC Alpine with considerable experience running ski teams in BC. He has a good understanding of the BC system and familiarity with most of our current FIS athletes. He believes strongly in ongoing professional development and is currently working on his Advanced Coaching Diploma.
“Adding Dustin to the team couldn’t excite me more,” said BC Alpine VP Johnny Crichton. “I believe in hiring from within and he’s a BC boy who’s put in the work! Dust also has a huge passion for learning and comes into this with a growth mindset attitude. It’s going to be fun!”
“I am very excited to step into this role with the BC Ski Team, an organization I have respected for my entire coaching career,” said Koepke. “Working alongside Morgan (Pridy) and Montana (Molyneux) with a great group of athletes is an opportunity I’m thrilled to take on. I aim to add to the culture of excellence this program provides.”
Dustin Koepke
“We are very excited to have Dustin join the BC Ski Team staff,” said Morgan Pridy, BCST Head Coach. “His work with different clubs and age groups in BC over the past several years has given him excellent experience and perspective within our province’s development system. I think he will be a great addition to the team.”
As he enters his fifth season with the BC Ski Team coaching staff, we are excited to announce that Morgan Pridy has accepted the BC Ski Team Head Coach position! Following in Nick Cooper’s footsteps leaves Pridy with some big shoes to fill, but the two have spent four years together building a strong foundation of professionalism, teamwork and high-performance. Pridy is an obvious great choice for the role, and with Nick not far away, the transition is sure to be smooth.
“We are thrilled about Morgan Pridy stepping into the Head Coach role”, said BC Alpine VP Johnny Crichton. “As a life-long athlete and now coach in BC, he has been training for this role his whole life. Morgan’s vast race experience, his ability to clearly communicate with the athletes and his tireless work ethic really stand out in his long list of attributes.”
“It is very exciting to have the privilege to lead the BC Ski Team and to keep working with this amazing group of athletes”, said Pridy, of his new job. “I look forward to putting all my time and effort into this group and helping the team to earn, have, and be prepared for every opportunity I can.”
MORGAN PRIDY
“Morgan will be assisted by Montana Molyneux, who starts her second year with the team,” added Crichton. “BC Alpine will be looking for a third coach to round out the staff, and they will be tasked with not only the continued success of the men’s team, but also building back a strong women’s team. We are excited for the future!”
Morgan begins his new role on July 1st .
Quoting English literature in one breath and commenting how cultural changes could push Canada to the forefront of the ski world with the next, Alpine Canada’s CEO Thérèse Brisson remains optimistic for a brighter future.
Canada’s alpine team endured challenges likely never to be repeated after a season of a few highs and even more lows.
“In terms of athletic performance it was extraordinary,” Brisson said on a video call from her home in Mississauga, Ontario. “But extraordinarily challenging … and Canada had an extreme competitive disadvantage with the travel restrictions and quarantines.”
“You know that Charles Dickens line ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’? It was a bit of that for sure,” she said.
Nine months into the job as the leader of Alpine Canada, Brisson was more than impressed with the team’s ability to adapt.
“The athletes, teams and coaches responded with incredible creativity and resilience,” she said. “I was very proud of the teams and think that we had a great year in terms of athletic performances.”
Brisson cited the continued dominance of the national ski cross team – which garnered a crystal globe (Reece Howden, men’s overall) and the emergence of the next wave of ski cross talent, particularly on the women’s side.
Brisson was equally excited with the athletic performance with the alpine team – even though the group finished 10th in the FIS Nations Cup with roughly 10% of the World Cup points of world-leading Switzerland and less than a third of the total points of the U.S. Ski Team who also had similar travel and Covid-related challenges.
“Holy smokes, some great performances,” she said. “Marie-Michelle Gagnon finding her way in speed on the podium and remarkable performances with Erin [Mielzynski] and Laurence [St-Germain] both moving up their rankings before an Olympic year.”
The Canadian men’s team, which endured an injury-riddled campaign sprinkled with some notable finishes from up-and-coming racers, had a relatively mediocre season with one racer in the top 50 overall World Cup standings (Erik Read, 48th) and three in the top 100. The top overall discipline rank was Erik Read’s 20th in giant slalom and James Crawford’s 24th overall in super-G.
According to Brisson, the focus of Alpine Canada remains on effective delivery of a strategic plan and a renewed focus on funding all aspects of this plan.
With experience as a high-level marketing executive for consumer products, combined with elite sports leadership with Own the Podium and the Canadian Olympic Committee, Brisson is no stranger to the critical role of long and short-term planning.
At a recent national summit, which brought together national and provincial staff, coaches and directors focussed on a “Made for Canada: Strategic Plan 2021-2026.” The four-day zoom meeting covered the plans and strategies of high performance program delivery between the provinces and Alpine Canada.
The talent identification process of NextGen skiers and the “Podium Pathway” of the long-term athlete development model – mixed with current economic and systematic challenges – were discussed by technical and executive leaders.
“Our winning aspiration is to be a world-leading ski racing nation, that is inspired by the passion of Canada’s ski team,” Brisson said. “We are going into an Olympic year poised for podium performances for the first time in a while. And I’m very excited about the next group, we have some younger athletes who will be gaining more experience as they move towards 2026. And then the 2030 group … they will quickly become the NextGen and there’s a group of about 18 athletes there that we’re really excited about.”
According to Brisson, Alpine Canada pays less attention to the FIS Nations Cup – where alpine leaders such as Switzerland and Austria have a substantially larger roster – and focus more on podium performances at major events such as the world championships and Olympic games.
“That for us is world leading,” she explained. “This isn’t as much as a Nations Cup points discussion but I tell you we’re here to win. That’s a bit of a cultural adjustment. We don’t want skiers trying to ‘make the team’ as we want to win and we make no apologies for that.”
With the focus squarely on major event podium finishes, Brisson commented the relationship between Alpine Canada and the provinces is crucial to developing talent from the bottom up.
“For athletes to have podium potential at a major games we know that they need to have the sufficient training, volume and world-class coaching … and they need to be ranked high within their age,” she explained. “How we work with the provinces to enhance their programming [is important] so that they’re ready to continue to make progress.”
“If we’re not capable as a nation of developing athletes to be in the top 20 world ranking their age or younger, the chances of those athletes making a podium later on is something like less than 0.4 percent.”
With Alpine Canada’s selection process targeting athletes at ‘C team’ and above status, the heavy lifting for development of those skiers is driven at the provincial level, which oversees club and regional programming.
“We need to re-orient our system to help athletes progress to that level with the right intensity, coaching and competitive exposure. A lot of that work happens at the provincial level so we need to be clear about what that podium pathway and the gold medal profile looks like.”
Brisson’s vision of the podium pathway is an evidence-based approach which looks at the holistic view of the composition of a top-level skier, and the steps required to reach that level.
“We need to look at all aspects of sport performance from fitness levels to psychological and emotional profiles, lifestyle and habits,” she said. “We need good evidence and data profiles and we see this is as our role as the national organization to help everyone understand what that looks like. Part of the summit was socializing some of that work so that everyone knows and understands the path.”
Brisson also looks to a future with more domestic skiing, bigger and better events and a more cost-efficient process to developing future champions.
“We need to create scale and affordable access to training domestically,” she said. “We have the best training conditions in early winter and spring. If we can create scale and long term partnerships with the key resorts that could really unlock the secret sauce that we need to develop athletes domestically in a way that would be really different and more effective.”
Calgary, AB [June 21, 2021] – Today, Alpine Canada announced its ambitious five-year strategic plan, “Made for Canada – The Future for Ski Racing in Canada,” aimed at making Canada a world-leading ski racing nation in alpine, para-alpine, and ski cross through two Olympic and Paralympic cycles.
Specifically, the strategic plan aims to help Canada top the medal rankings in para-alpine and ski cross and achieve a top-five finish in alpine medal rankings at the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games by 2026.
“Since I joined Alpine Canada last year, we have sought feedback from hundreds of athletes, coaches, alumni, sponsors, provincial and territorial sport organizations, and our sport and funding partners about the ways that we can build upon Canada’s rich history and tradition of ski racing excellence,” said Therese Brisson, President and CEO of Alpine Canada. “In a year that we celebrated 100 years of ski racing, we took the opportunity to rethink our strategy to ensure it best meets the needs of our athletes and carves a path towards a better future for the broader ski community as we kick off the next century. The plan articulates the vision, priorities, and commitments needed to be a world-leading ski racing nation and achieve our dual mission to increase podium performances and inspire growth in participation and fans.”
The strategic plan addresses our challenges and identifies four “where to play” strategies to help deliver on this mission:
“We are optimistic about our future and focused on building capacity and resources to deliver on our ambitions,” said Tim Dattels, Chair of the Board of Alpine Canada. “We see a convergence of dynamics – new leadership, renewed strategic focus, a newly-elected FIS President with a North American growth agenda, and the potential for a 2030 Vancouver/Whistler bid – that could make this one of the most exciting decades for ski racing in Canada, ever.”
Built on the values of excellence, leadership, accountability, respect, and courage, and grounded in our nation-building purpose of powering a nation to peak performance by inspiring Canadians to be at their very best, the strategic plan makes the following commitments to achieve these results:
Alpine Canada has already begun executing upon the initiatives captured in the strategic plan, which can be found with Key Performance Indicators measuring successful delivery here.
Alpine Canada President & CEO Therese Brisson will host Open Town Halls to share the Made For Canada strategic plan with the broader ski community on June 22 at 7pm ET / 5pm MT (English content) and June 28 at 7pm ET / 5PM MT (French content). Click to register for the live video conference .
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For more information or media inquiries please contact
Brianne Law I Director, Brand and Product
media@alpinecanada.org I 587-999-4241
About Alpine Canada
Alpine Canada is the governing body for alpine, para-alpine, and ski cross racing in Canada, as well as for Canadian ski coaches, providing education, certification, insurance, and compliance with the coaching code of conduct. With the support of valued corporate partners and donors, along with the Government of Canada, Own the Podium, the Canadian Olympic Committee, and the Coaching Association of Canada, Alpine Canada develops Olympic, Paralympic, World Championship, and World Cup athletes to stimulate visibility, inspiration, and growth in the ski community. In 2020-21, Alpine Canada celebrated 100 years of rich tradition in competitive skiing in Canada.
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Baptiste Cais during inspection at a FIS race in Panorama in late December. Photo by Roger Carry