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Midland Ski Club Hits the Mark!
Midland Ski Club achieves Snowmark accreditation - Only the 3rd Snowsports club to achieve this award.
The Midland Ski Club, formed in 1965, is one of the largest independent snowsport clubs in the UK and has around 500 members providing a myriad of opportunities for enthusiasts to enjoy their snowsports. The club, which is based at The Ackers Adventure Centre in the Heart of the Midlands, offers members of all ages the opportunity to learn, develop, compete and enjoy their chosen Snowsport at all levels on both plastic and snow, in the UK and overseas.
The club provides high quality coaching for recreational and competitive skiers of all levels with one of its primary objectives seeking out and encouraging younger members to develop their racing skills so as to become successful participants in club, regional, national and international competitions. They also provide opportunities to skiers of proven ability to train up as instructors and coaches. Even non skiers in the family can qualify as race officials so there is something for everyone!
Midland Ski Club also operates a number of very popular holidays to resorts in Europe and North and South America which have been running successfully for many years.
In recent times The Midland Nordic Ski Club merged with the MSC and so the club can now offer many more opportunities in Cross-Country, Roller Skiing (on tarmac), Ski Touring and Telemark.
What are Snowmark and Clubmark and what does it mean for the clubs that are accredited? Clubmark is a Sport England initiative and is the only national cross sports quality accreditation scheme for clubs with junior sections. It is built around a set of core criteria which ensure that accredited clubs operate to a set of consistent, accepted and adopted minimum operating standards. Using the Sport England Clubmark as a guide, Snowsport England has developed its own club development accreditation scheme called Snowmark. This recognises that snow sports have some characteristics which are unique to them and make them different. Clubs attaining Snowmark will automatically get Sport England Clubmark accreditation as well.
The Club worked towards achieving Snowmark to ensure they had consistent good practice and operating standards to enable them to grow and develop and strengthen their future prospects. Having this quality standard in place they hope will demonstrate the club is organised and managed on a professional basis and with consistent good practice.
MIDLAND SKI CLUB QUOTE
Bryan Thomas, chairman of the club said: "Snowmark has helped us formalise many of the things we were already doing and sharpen up the way we ran the Club. It has also helped to give us more structure to what we do and some of the procedures put into place as part of the Clubmark process should make the day-to-day running of the club easier and help to recruit volunteers and coaches. Achieving Clubmark has given everyone in the club a boost and has forced us to plan ahead more and look towards developing the Club further on many fronts, building on its success so far."
This success has been achieved through the very considerable efforts of a hard working band of dedicated volunteers, and it is to them that credit for this award must be given. Midland Ski Club offers skiing opportunities to all who are interested in this sporting activity and the club’s achievements in competition whether it be on dry or snow, at home or abroad, gives all members something to aspire to.
The facilities used at The Ackers are being reviewed and if funding is found for necessary improvements to go ahead it will help us greatly to achieve our goals as a club and also those of Snowsport England.
We will also benefit greatly from the stronger links we will now have with schools and the wider community as a result of the work to achieve Clubmark.
The support from County Sports Partnerships and local school sports link officers will help put snowsports and Midland Ski Club more firmly on the map.
For more information visit the Club's website www.midlandski.org.uk
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