After individual training on the hill and some dry land training at the gymnastics club, the Jasper freestyle team is preparing for the Alberta Winter Games trials next month with their first team training taking place this weekend at Marmot Basin.

The club is hoping to send eight athletes from Jasper to the Alberta Games, and club president Cam Jenkins says they have a promising team this year.

“We’ve got a few more athletes than we had last year, and we’re really excited, we’ve got a couple more kids out of Hinton, we’ve got some coming from the Robson Valley, a couple more out of St. Albert/Edmonton area. We’re going to be around 60-something,” Jenkins says.

Jasper will be hosting the trials for the Alberta Winter Games on Dec. 18-20, where the top 11-14 year-old freestyle skiers in the province will fight for a chance to compete at 2010 Alberta Winter Games. The athletes will compete in events such as moguls, aerial, half pipe and table top.

Jenkins says that while athletes can compete in the Alberta Winter Games until you are almost 17, since Jasper’s club is so big and has so much depth, it is concentrating on kids aged more between 11 and 14.

“Most of them are 11-14. Typically, some of the kids can (be older), but what we’ve done as a club, we’ve said if you’ve competed above such-and-such a level, then we’ll let the younger kids have that opportunity, and those kids are cool with it,” he says.

The team’s two coaches are head coach Mike Donnelly and provincial team/high performance coach Chris Peel. Concentrating on the younger athletes helps them become more elite athletes by the time they reach their later teens, which has been proven by two of the clubs skiers, Max Novotny and Troy Minogue graduating onto the Canada West freestyle team last year.

“And we’ve got another two that will make junior nationals in March, which will be held in Nova Scotia this year,” Jenkins adds.

Jasper will again be the host for the Alberta Provincial Championships in April, which will be another huge event for the team, where there will be moguls, dual moguls and a big air event.