Hey, I’m Emily Brickwood, a 17-year-old girl from Whangamatā. I play rugby and love to dance, but my favourite sport is skiing. I have been skiing since I could walk and come from a family where everyone loves skiing and we spend as many winter weekends as we can at the mountain. Some of my favourite things about skiing are: there is always a new challenge, the terrain is constantly changing, and being lucky enough to spend time with family or friends while doing something we all enjoy.
Over the October holidays, I passed my Level One Ski Instructor’s exam. This qualification is recognised internationally and means I can introduce and get people enthusiastic about a sport that is such a big part of my life. To gain my qualification, I had to spend 5-6 hours on the Turoa side of Mt Ruapehu for five days. Over the first three days, Monday to Wednesday, we went back to the basics. We were taught how to help beginners who have never skied before get comfortable with the snow and feeling of skis on their feet, we perfected our demonstration of different kinds of wedge turns from basic wedge turns to advanced wedge turns, and learnt ways to keep our students engaged. We had an assessed teach on Thursday where our examiner evaluated and marked our teaching strategies, accuracy of demonstrations, and knowledge of what skills we were teaching our students. On the last day, we worked on our personal skiing skills by getting feedback on our parallel turns and carving, as well as receiving our exam results.
Skiing overseas is what inspired me to attend the course. Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to spend time in Canada. It was minus 20 nearly every day and everywhere was covered in snow. The ski fields and snow conditions were incredible. In the future, I plan to travel overseas to teach in different ski fields around the world.
I would definitely recommend the course to anyone who is passionate about skiing, the benefits are infinite. Some personal highlights for me were making amazing friends and growing my personal skiing and communication skills – plus now I am able to teach skiers in different countries all over the world.
Words by Emily Brickwood
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