Want to know how to plan a World Cup ski race? CMC will walk you through it

By Shauna Farnell for Colorado Mountain College

When Duncan Kerr was in seventh grade, he knew he wanted to drive snowcats. What prompted such direction for a kid this age, especially one growing up in Connecticut? Kerr had seen a YouTube ad for Colorado Mountain College’s degree in ski area operations.

As part of the curriculum, Colorado Mountain College offers a race event-planning course that partners with Beaver Creek and the Vail Valley Foundation to show students the many ropes in all aspects of race preparation. It’s working in big ways to fill career paths.

Kerr visited the CMC campus in Leadville with his parents to prove to them that this type of education was in fact, “a real thing.”

“I’ve never been a big fan of school,” Kerr said. “But when we arrived, it didn’t look like a school to me. It didn’t feel like a school. It was like a little community.”

From that first visit onward, he was all in. Kerr enrolled in the SAO degree and graduated from CMC last spring. He is now living the dream as a snowmaker and cat operator at Beaver Creek.

What truly clinched this dream was the ski race event planning class, a two-credit course centered around the Birds of Prey Alpine Ski World Cup races at Beaver Creek. The class is co-taught by CMC Leadville and Salida campus dean Benjamin Cairns, who is also a ski coach, along with retired Beaver Creek heavy equipment operator John Neufeld, who helped build the Birds of Prey course in the 1990s. The event planning class is a first-hand deep dive into the many facets of resort operations that go into hosting a World Cup ski race.

“If students are thinking of getting into ski area operations, particularly at the bigger resorts that put on big events, whether it’s racing, snowboarding or X Games, this class gives them real insight,” Neufeld said. “They are all just blown away by what it takes – so many departments, volunteers, media. On top of that, the resort still has to operate for the public.”

The class includes field trips to Beaver Creek, the first taking place in the fall before there’s snow on the ground and the race site is simply open grass and dirt. Students then return to meet with race organizers from the Vail Valley Foundation as well as the Beaver Creek operations team. The class culminates with hands-on work during the Birds of Prey races as part of the volunteer-based Talon Crew.

The experience sealed Kerr’s resolve to secure a permanent role at Beaver Creek.

“Watching snowcats climb a racecourse that’s 45 degrees, that was very cool,” he says. “Also, just the passion for this event that people work on year-round, to work alongside these people is something I’m very grateful for. I mean, how do you experience that and not want to be a part of it?”

Lexi Monahan, who is halfway through her SAO degree at CMC, feels the same way about the event planning class. Aiming to try out for Ski Patrol this spring, the December class prompted Monahan to set her ultimate career goal on working for an organization like the Vail Valley Foundation.

“Watching the foundation put the races on, seeing everything that went into it and the stress over every detail, then seeing them light up when it all came together perfectly, it was wild,” Monahan said. “Doing the shovel work and being around everyone who knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, it’s amazing. It’s such a big event, but it goes so smoothly.”

In its first two years, the class is providing a direct conduit from education to local workforce integration.

“The way we see higher education going in our mountain communities, it has to be a full-on collaboration with industry. It can’t be siloed,” Cairns said. “The fact that the Vail Valley Foundation and Beaver Creek are so willing to partner with us on this and students are so interested, it’s where education should be going.”

As for students, the event planning class has not only helped land dream careers but has provided some bragging rights.

“I hear from Connecticut friends in engineering or physics sitting in a huge hall with 200 other students. Then I compare it to my experience at CMC, having 10 or 20 students in a class where instructors really care about your success,” Kerr said. “It’s fun sending photos from the World Cup or from the top of the mountain and saying, hey, this is my classroom today."