Technique and Program Awards

Participants in the Rabbit Skill Development Program (Rabbit SDP) will receive, depending on their age, a Bunny Rabbit or Jack Rabbit Booklet.  These booklets outline the skills that your child will progress through as they go through the Rabbit SDP levels. Children receive a booklet when they first register for the Rabbit SDP. They should use this booklet to track their progress over their Rabbit SDP years. Replacement booklets are available for $5.00.  Please bring your child’s booklet to the first Rabbit SDP session.  Coaches need to review which skills your child has completed, and some booklets have written reports for the skiers from last year that are important for their new coach to review. 

Bunny Rabbit Program

During the season, skiers will work toward earning five different Paw Award stickers for skiing skills. Once all those technique skills are achieved, the skier will earn a Bunny Rabbit Award Sticker.

Bunnies are also encouraged to work towards a Snow Goal Award. If they meet the criteria, as defined below, will need to let their coach now by the end of the Rabbits session.

Bunny coaches may also choose to have their group participate in the Sprint Race to earn a Sprint Award depending on the skiing ability at the time of the race.  Please see below for the description.

Jack Rabbit Program

During the season, the skiers will work towards earning award stickers for their booklets in the following areas, Technique, Snow Goal, Sprint, and Hat Trick.

Technique Award

During each of the four levels of the Rabbit SDP, skiers work towards earning a Technique Award.  Skiers are initially placed in a specific level based on their development age and skiing ability.  At each level, there are specific skills that the skier must be able to demonstrate.  Descriptions of these skills are listed in the Jack Rabbit booklets. Skills assessment and evaluation by coaches will determine whether or not they have satisfactorily completed this stage of the program and earned the applicable technique award, or whether they need to do more work on specific skills before they graduate to the next level.

Please note that it is not expected that each child will earn a Technique Award every year.  It may take a couple years at each level to learn the skills required.  Our program is only 10 weeks long, and it often takes much longer to develop these skills.

Snow Goal Award

The objective of the Snow Goal Award is to encourage time on the snow in addition to the Rabbit SDP sessions for the purpose of improving a skier’s balance, agility, fitness and rhythm—the key elements of good ski technique.

To achieve a Snow Goal Award, skiers must ski (minimum 1 hour) in addition to their lesson.  This means that if the children ski again after lunch for a minimum of 1 hour, they can earn a point towards the award.  If they ski for 2 hours, they still only receive 1 point.  The point system is based on the number of days that the child skis outside of the lesson, not the hours.  If the child skis again on a different day of the week (minimum 1 hour), they will earn another point.

The Snow Goal point system runs like this:  
• If they ski 5 times outside of their lesson, they earn a SNOW GOAL 1 sticker.
• If they ski 10 times outside of their lesson, they earn a SNOW GOAL 2 sticker.
• If they ski 15 times outside of their lesson, they earn a SNOW GOAL 3 sticker.
• If they ski 20 times outside of their lesson, they earn a SNOW GOAL 4 sticker.

Please keep track from the beginning of the season and try to remember how many other days you came up skiing or stayed after a Rabbit SDP session for another ski.  By the 9th weekend of the season, it will be up to the parents to let the coach know the results by email, phone or in person, so that coaches can award your child the correct Snow Goal sticker on the following (and last) weekend.

Sprint Award

The purpose of this award is to encourage skiers to develop speed in their skiing and expose them to a race–like experience (because it’s fun!)  The children will also actively cheer on their fellow participants.  Skiers aged 6–7 (by the end of the current year) will ski a 50 meter race course. Skiers 8 years and up will ski a 75 meter race course.  Timing will be done for these distances.  Beckie Scott Sprint sticker awards are green, blue, purple, red and gold.

One weekend during the Rabbit season will be dedicated to Sprint Races.  Each Rabbit group will be assigned a group racing time and will spend approximately 15 minutes at the Sprint Race area in the stadium. Following their sprint they will continue with a regular session.

Sprint Award Formula

Hat Trick Award

The objective of this award is to recognize the exceptional accomplishment of achieving a high standard for technique, speed, and commitment.

Awards are based on a combination of Technical Award, Snow Goal and Sprint Award to collect an all-round achievement award – the Pierre Harvey Hat Trick Award.