"Volume" the key for US men's team

The U.S. men’s team will be larger next season with a whopping 17 skiers full-time on the World Cup. And if nothing else, they’ll have some miles under them before the season starts. The key word for pre-season is “volume”.

“We will ski a lot more volume this year,” says head coach Sasha Rearick. “We’ve cut back ski days for the last few years either due to budget or the Olympics, but we’re going to go back to basics and fundamentals and build a base. We will ski substancially more volume than in at least the last two or three years.”

There will also be some reorganization. There will be coaching changes  – they aren’t finalized so we’ll have to wait for those – but in an effort to change up team dynamics, the team will be broken into two parts, a speed/multi-event component and a tech component.

The lions share of those 17 individuals will find themselves on the multi-team “everybody from (Marco) Sullivan through (Will) Brandenburg,” says Rearick.  The tech team will remain much as it was last season. “Not a whole lot of changes there. We have good momentum there and we will continue building in that direction,” Rearick says.

That tech squad of slalom and GS skiers plus the development team (with invitees) will kick off with a camp at Mount Bachelor May 9. The speed group and Europa Cup group will join together at Mammoth at the same time.

“Bachelor has always been excited to have us. They really go out of their way,” said Rearick. “And Mammoth is just fantastic every year.”

There will be another Mammoth camp in June “It will be a slalom camp, short, five or six days of high volume, “Rearick explains, “and then to New Zealand,” – where again the tech and speed teams will visit separate sites.

And after that coach? “Then Portillo and then Colorado and it’s game-on”

“We’ll be working the volume, really kick ourselves. You have to look long term. We have a tremendous group of young guys coming in, but they need the opportunity to improve their skills. We’ll have 17 guys full time on the World Cup next year, but we don’t have the depth at the top level. We need them to become one of the best and fastest.”

Rearick continued, “Our second group has good speed and good fundamentals, but to reach the level we want them to be at will take a lot more training than we’ve been doing.”