Flathead Freeride Club skiers qualify for junior championships

In only its second season of offering a competitive freeride program at Whitefish Mountain Resort, the Flathead Freeride Club has two athletes qualified for the North American Junior Championship going on at Kicking Horse Resort near Golden, B.C., Canada this week, April 5-9. The invite-only event is for top-ranked International Freeride Ski Association athletes aged 12-18. Only the top 175 out of over 3,000 IFSA junior athletes from the US and Canada are invited.

Katie Hersom, of Whitefish, and Bodie Mason, of Bigfork, were selected to attend the championships based on their results from qualifying competitions this season. This is Hersom’s first season competing on the IFSA Junior Freeride Tour, although she raced with FFC’s parent organization, Flathead Valley Ski Education Foundation, for six seasons and spent a season with the Whitefish Freestyle Team.

Aside from not finishing her first competition at Whitefish Mountain Resort, she was dominant in the female 15-18 category. She won all the other regional qualifiers she entered at Panorama, B.C., Big Sky, Montana, and Castle Mountain, Alberta. She then placed fourth in her first national qualifier in Lake Louise, Alberta, and won the second national qualifier she entered at Big Sky, March 9-12. The points earned at the two national events were enough to qualify her second overall for the NOR-AMs.

Hersom is excited to represent the FFC at Kicking Horse, saying, “Skiing has been there for me longer than I can remember, but now it’s different… I’m skiing for something bigger than me.”

Mason has been competing on the IFSA Junior Freeride Tour for the last three ski seasons, but this was also his first going up against skiers in the most competitive category, male 15-18. He also started out the season with the disappointment of losing a ski on his first big air at the Whitefish IFSA qualifier, keeping him out of the finals and out of the points on his home hill.

Mason kept his head and managed his nerves at the next qualifier at Grand Targhee, Idaho, a national qualifier stacked full of junior pros. He was able to increase the level of difficulty with his line in the finals and ended up with a strong sixth-place finish. Then he made a costly mistake competing at the Snowbird national qualifier and failed to make the cut for the finals – another low-score event.

Turning it around again, Mason racked up another top-10 finish at the national qualifier in Big Sky, earning ninth place. Neither of the top-10 national finishes were enough to get the invite to the NOR-AMS, though.

In his final qualifying event, he knew the only chance for an invite was to win the Schweitzer Regional event. Mason led the field after the first qualifying run and put down an even bigger and more exciting run in the finals. It was his first win on the Junior IFSA tour and enough to secure a spot for the NOR-AMs. Older sister, Amelia Mason, also won her division at Schweitzer.

Bodie Mason is the 47th athlete invited to compete in a field of 54 athletes in the male 15-18 ski division at the NOR-AM Championships.