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PROUDLY SUPPORTING YOUTH - Paralympic Athlete
Among the young people assisted by Daybreak Rotary in recent years is Andrea Dziewior (shown above) who is now a world-class alpine skier and a member of the Canadian Disabled Alpine Ski Team. Andrea was still a student at NDSS a few years ago, when the club contributed to the purchase of specialized equipment she needed to compete at the next level of her sport. She is now training for the 2010 Paralympic alpine skiing at the Olympics in Vancouver and ranks among the top 15 disabled female skiers in the world. Daybreak Rotary members are extremely proud of this young woman's outstanding accomplishments and are honoured to have had a small part in helping her succeed. We hope to watch her at the 2010 Paralympic Games in March.
Here is her most recent update, sent just before Christmas:
Every year for the last four years I have spent at least a week in Panorama at different pre-season camps. I also spent time working as a lift attendant and a housekeeper there when I had finished high school.
Panorama always feels like a second home to me. I really enjoy having the luxury of going to a familiar place to train because it reduces any stress or anxiety that I occasionally feel when having to adapt to a new location.
The Panorama camp, though shorter than the other camps this season, provided me with some great training opportunities that none of the other mountains have yet. The weather and snow conditions were changing drastically daily.
This can sometimes be very frustrating because I don't develop a good feeling for the snow day-to-day and am constantly required to adapt and learn to adjust my skiing to fit the conditions. There was a different condition every day, from loose grainy 'death cookies', to wet snow from rain and even solid ice by the end of the camp because of injections in the snow of the slalom hill we were training on.
I think that the changing conditions were a great training opportunity because the conditions can change that drastically in any competition location and it is a very valuable skill to be able to change and adapt quickly to different racing environments. It helped me start to develop a mindset where I was ready for any condition and not expecting the conditions to stay static between days.
We did have the opportunity to train at least a day or two in every event which is great preparation for the upcoming races in Colorado. I will leave on Dec 7th for Denver with the team and we will train at Copper Mountain for a few days before starting the North American circuit races that will run for just over a week both at Copper Mountain and in Winter Park.
I feel that I have made some significant improvements in my Slalom training and look forward to seeing how those new skills will work in a race situation. In GS and Super-G there have been slower but very steady improvements and I do look forward to seeing how I will fare in those races.
I feel much stronger and more confident than last year and entering the season strong without the worries that come along with recovering from an injury has been a very enjoyable experience.
It is crunch time for qualifying for the Paralympic's and every country is putting everything they have on the line for the Games in the new year. I will keep everyone posted on how the races in Colorado go so you can all share my experiences in this exciting year. |
