Ski and Snowboard Club Vail freeride snowboarders claim three podiums at IFSA Junior Championships

The 2024 International Freeskiers & Snowboarders Association junior championships were held in the Rocky Mountain region for the first time earlier this month. Ski and Snowboard Club Vail’s big mountain snowboarders capitalized on the home field advantage.

The club qualified seven athletes to the event, held at Breckenridge Resort. Riders competed on Peak 7’s Vertigo and Y Chutes for the April 7th qualifier and Peak 6’s Sixth Senses terrain on the April 9th final. SSCV claimed five top-10s, punctuated by Kaleb Gibbs’ U19 overall title.

“He’s very familiar with that area, which helped him out a bunch,” coach Kevin Sundheim said of Gibbs, whom he called a “self-motivated, total package” rider.

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“He’s become an absolute powerhouse in the last four years that I’ve worked with him,” Sundheim continued. “He’s kind of incorporating it all. He’ll get into very exposed areas while still having freestyle tricks on large features.” 

In Breckenridge, Gibbs posted a 66.53 two-run point total — 3.5 points clear of runner up Bradley Lamoreaux — leaning into his technical skills and slopestyle background. He honed the latter under Sundheim’s tutelage before Sundheim became the club’s first dedicated snowboard freeride coach two years ago.

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“The program is in its infancy,” the coach said. While the team only rostered four athletes in 2023, this year seven of Sundheim’s nine riders qualified for the IFSA junior championships, which featured more than 350 of the best freeride skiers and snowboarders from across North and South America. Qualification was based on season rankings, calculated from athletes’ three best regular-season results.

Sundheim said redemption was the theme of the season.
“We had some really amazing comebacks,” he said before pointing to one prime example in Julie Brown. The high school freshman almost didn’t even make it to nationals. In fact, she was on the outside looking in until the final U19 qualifier decided to decline their spot at the last minute.

“She definitely did not start her season off very strong,” Sundheim said. Brown made the nine-person final by the skin of her teeth, too — 0.03 points — before posting the best score of the day in her second run to finish in the silver medal position.

“For her to be able to make that comeback is pretty amazing,” Sundheim said. “It’s definitely a pretty strong accomplishment and was not something I thought was going to be in the cards.” 

Emma Rodas and Kayla Roussel finished fourth and sixth, respectively, in the U15 girls division.

“She really stepped up her game this year, pushing herself out of her comfort zone,” Sundheim said of the 12-year-old Rodas, who is in her first year with the team. “She was a pretty strong rider to begin with, but she kind of got thrown to the wolves this year following around an older teenage group.”

Sundheim said Roussel wasn’t “quite as tenacious” in trying to qualify for championships last year, but the appetite increased in her second season with the club.

“To see her develop some drive this year and really push to get better and focus on doing well in comps was really amazing,” the coach said of Roussel, who won three events this season and finished second in a fourth. On the boys side, Andrew Buchanan finished 19th in the U15 boys category, an event won by Edwards snowboarder Eli Eisenman.

“Just really stoked on all those kids’ performances in general,” Sundheim said.

Sundheim said even though he comes from a slopestyle riding background himself, freeriding has “definitely been more of a passion.”

“It offers more expression of an athletes’ personal riding,” he said. “So, my approach in coaching is to push kids to go bigger and try things to get out of their comfort zones, but also really let the kids take ownership of their own lines so they can express their style in their comp run.”

The future looks bright for his relatively young team. The team’s oldest member, Oscar Wood, will try to improve upon his 23rd place finish in 2024 as a senior in 2025. Meanwhile, Gibbs — who earned a Freeride World Tour Junior Worlds invite with his placement in the final season standings — is just a freshman, as are Roussel and Brown. Sundheim is already scheming ways to keep the momentum going: on-snow camps at Mammoth Mountain and possibly Chile are in the works.

“Just kind of growing the program as a whole is what I’m really excited about,” he said. “Getting more kids to enroll, getting more coaches and providing the same stuff the rest of our programs provide.”