CAMDEN — The Camden Snow Bowl announced Tuesday that top-notch freestyle coach and competitor Nolan Sullivan has signed on to head up its new freestyle ski program. 

Sullivan coached the Gould Academy freestyle team, based at Sunday River Ski Area in Bethel. 

In his role with Gould Academy, Sullivan traveled to competitions at ski areas throughout the east.

Sullivan grew up skiing at Sunday River, attended the Cape Elizabeth High School, and following an internship, will graduate from the University of Southern Maine during the coming year.

Sullivan said in a press release that he has exciting plans for the Snow Bowl's new program.

"Our approach is learning through progression," he said in the release. "Content will focus on skills needed to become a well-rounded skier. The various disciplines of freestyle will be covered throughout the season, from the necessary fundamental skills of slopestyle skiing to freeride and moguls. Park etiquette is part of the program as well.”

Sullivan said that his program will be open to all ages and levels. "Everyone can get something out of this, even the youngest entry-level beginners. It's not just for the skiers who have a lot of experience in the terrain park," he said.

Sullivan said that he and the Snow Bowl’s other freestyle coach, Jessie Tobias, will guide the freestyle group to progress as a team.

"Skiing is inherently an individual sport," he said. "But in the program, skiers have to work together as a team. I know from my experience with the Gould team how important it is for participants to support each other and progress together. With this dynamic, team members push each other to try new things and it creates a fun and productive atmosphere."

The discipline of freestyle skiing includes every aspect of the sport all rolled into one. The disciplines include: slopestyle (tricks on elements in the terrain park), moguls, aerials, and freeskiing on the whole mountain. While each aspect is different in practice, all center around a solid foundation in the fundamentals of technical skiing, balance, control and air awareness.

Over the course of the winter, the Snow Bowl plans to host in-house slopestyle competitions. These will be an optional aspect of the program. Competitions will take place during the second half the season and the Snow Bowl will invite programs and schools around the state to participate in open format slopestyle events.

Backcountry skiing will also be added to the Snow Bowl's instructional offerings this season. As the Camden Snow Bowl instructional programs progress to a new level, the ski school will expand to cover all aspects of the sport.

Scholarships for participating in the Snow Bowl's programs are available, as are discounts on freestyle ski equipment for those in the program. More information on the new freestyle program is available at camdensnowbowl.com/freestyle/ or by calling 236-3438.

Freestyle Skiing Definitions

Slopestyle (Terrain Park Skiing): An athlete who is geared toward slopestyle enjoys spending the majority of their time in the mountain’s terrain park. Training and learning different tricks on jump and rail features set up by the mountain gearing toward competition, film segments, sponsorship or just for the thrill of the challenge. On the competition level athletes all ski the same trail set up usually consisting of a variety of rail and box features at the beginning of a course followed by two or three jumps increasing in size. There is no prescribed trick or line, competitors get and creative as they want and showcase their best tricks and style to the judges. The run is judged based on the overall impression which means that all aspects of the run, including difficulty, trick variety, amplitude, combination of tricks, progression and execution all effect the score. While this is the most common form of slopestyle competition there are also big air events which consist of only one jump and rail jams that feature a variety of park features and is judged similarly to a slopestyle competition. Training in slopestyle skiing can start at any age that an athlete (and parents) are confident with their abilities to begin working on jumping fundamentals and basic park features like a box rail or low rail elements. Park skiing is one of the fastest growing and most popular aspects of freestyle skiing because most mountains around the world can set up features for anyone to play on. The Snow Bowl has park staff who are excited to see this new program begin and plan to build another great terrain park this season with some input from the team.

Aerials: An athlete who is interested in pursuing aerials skiing wants to solely focus the majority of his or her time on jumps. Unlike slopestyle, where style and creativity dominate the discipline, aerials is much more technical. Very much like gymnastics, aerials skiing is judged on form and technique on the takeoff, in the air and on the landing. In competition aerials is set on a course of two to five jumps that vary in size and angle of takeoff. Each athlete goes one at a time to showcase their maneuvers and are judged based on air which is 20 percent of the score, form which is 50 percent, and landing which is the final 30 percent. The Camden Snow Bowl will not have a traditional aerial mound or jump set up but can work with athletes in the air on the jumps in the park if they are interested in learning the technical maneuvers of aerials. There are not many programs that offer aerials as part of their freestyle programs on the East Coast, so there is a limited amount of competitions and venues during the course of the winter.

Moguls: Mogul skiing is one of the most important technical aspects of any freestyle program. An athlete who wants to spend the majority of their time training in the moguls is someone who is dedicated to learning the technical aspects of the discipline and wants to push themselves to excel on any mogul course. On the competitive end moguls is a timed run down a series of moguls interrupted by two jumps during the run. Athletes are judged on their overall speed which is 20 percent of the score, aerial maneuvers off the jumps which is again 20 percent of their total score and finally turns through the moguls which is the most important as it makes up 60 percent of the total. Competitions are either regular moguls with one athlete on course at a time or dual moguls where competitors go head to head in a bracketed knockout format. This discipline is one of the hardest to master in the world of freestyle skiing but is one of the best tools to make an athlete a better all-around skier. This is because mogul skiing teaches kids how to control their edges to execute turns, absorption of the bumps, an athletic skiing stance, proper pole plants, balance, jumping technique and body control all in one discipline. The skills an athlete learns in the mogul course will translate to all other areas of the mountain. Whether it is skiing in the trees, in the terrain park, on jumps or skiing big mountains the skills learned in mogul skiing will be the most important tools for any athlete. The Snow Bowl hopes to set up a small mogul course with a jump for the athletes to get a taste of the sport this winter, snow permitting.

Freeride: The discipline of freeride skiing is a combination of all the other areas of freestyle skiing rolled into one. A freeride athlete is someone who wants to spend most of their time skiing in the trees, finding natural features across the mountain and is always looking for the creative line choice. In competition freeride athletes have an area of the mountain that they get to ski down for the competition and pick their own line, tricks and features that they want during their run. These competitions are judged on skier control, difficulty of the line, overall speed and tricks during the run. There are large freeride competition series that run in the western United States as well as across Europe such as the Freeride World Tour. On the east coast our freeride skiing is more limited to the trees and features on the sides of the trails because we do not have the vast open natural terrain like much of the west does. Despite this there is a competitive freeride circuit called the Ski the East Freeride Tour, which makes stops at mountains such as Mad River Glen, Jay Peak and Sugarloaf in Maine. This competition is formatted much like those competitions around the world but is open for anyone to enter. These events bring athletes of all abilities together to compete, learn from one another in a fun and friendly atmosphere. This series is a really good opportunity for athletes to get introduced to the discipline in a fun and supportive atmosphere. The majority of the competitors are locals and fellow northeast skiers looking to join in on the competition and see what they've got. Any athlete can compete in these events and the freestyle program will work with athletes to make sure they are confident in their freeride abilities if they hope to compete on the East Coast or elsewhere.