Snowsport Scotland successfully held our 2020 AGM, in a slightly different format than usual, via Zoom for the first time. Even though, we couldn’t all come together to look back on the year gone by, it was great to still present the outcomes and reports from SSS, as well as hear a fantastic presentation from GB Snowsport CEO Vicky Gosling and then present our 2019/20 Snowsport Scotland Awards.

Throughout the AGM, we presented our audited 2019-20 accounts and approved our 20/21 budget, presented the annual report and successfully appointed 3 new board directors:

Paul Stark (General Director), Maggie Lawrie (General Director) and Scott McMorris (Park & Pipe Director). Timothy Winther was also confirmed as our new Independent Finance Director, who was approved by the board.

Full details of the minutes and annual report can be found here 

 

We also presented our 3 Snowsport Scotland Annual Awards for the 2019/20 season:

Coach of the Year – Alex Standen 

Cross country skiing has been extremely fortunate that Alex moved into coaching and he has worked through the ranks to now coach at a high level and become one of only three SSS tutors. Alex has transformed the performance coaching of Scottish cross country athletes in recent years to a level not seen before. Last season’s Project Lillehammer was an inspired new project which allowed U23 athletes to spend a whole winter racing and training in Norway with their own coach. It probably lays a foundation for a model of development that can help take UK athletes to a level that is competitive in the XC World!

Athlete Performance of the Year – Kirsty Muir 

Kirsty won the silver medal a the Youth Olympics in Lausanne back in January, only narrowly missing out on gold. She was the first British athlete to win a medal in their event and the only individual medal at the games! Kirsty also won the Europa Cup Big Air in Davos in February, which was her first win of a Europa Cup in Big Air!

Volunteer of the Year – Rick Newman 

Rick has recently retired from Chair of BNDS after 6 years, having been vice chair before this and a committee member before that. In that position he ran the group that drove the whole of the British Cross Country Skiing development process and so has overseen 2 Olympic games, the hand over of the elite squad to BSS/GBS, 2 World Championships and much more! Since 2006 Rick & his wife and family have organised and run the main fundraiser for the cross country squad, Ming the Merciless’ Midsummer Madness. In its first running it raised £450 and has shown up ward trends since then until its Covid postponement in 2020.  It  has raised in the region of £15,000 since the 2006 inception. Rick has probably not given any thought to any of this, it’s just what he’s done.