The Ski and Snowboard Teams are preparing for their upcoming season at Mount Hood. Soon, they will be sitting on cold snowy chairlifts and enjoying the powdered slopes. Athletes on both teams are anticipating a great year.

Jesper Lesher, a junior, who is a very active team member on the snowboard team, is excited about the season.

“I’m feeling like it’s going to be pretty good. There’s this thing called La Nina, basically, it’s going to be very cold this winter which makes it so that it will hopefully have really good snow,” said Lesher.

Senior Nicole Prall, one of the captains of the ski team,is prepared for the upcoming season.

“I am super excited. I believe we have a lot of good seniors and a lot of upcoming [underclassmen] who are going to be a big help to the team,” Prall said. “We could potentially win state for the third year in a row.”

However, Lesher says the team also faces challenges due to seniors graduating.

“We lost a lot of our team last year. We had a ton of seniors who were really good like Oska Featherstone,” Lesher said. “We have [to compete against] Hood River which is a really good team, so when it comes to state that’s going to be kind of an issue.”

Prall believes the ski team won’t have many challenges this season due to the close community.

“I mean as a team, by itself, we were not going to have any challenges. We always have fun, we always get along, it’s always just a great supportive community,” said Prall. “Racing wise there’s always the potential that people could get injured… [Crashes] always happens, but we will get back up and we will be better.”

Lesher and Prall agree that the community created by the ski and snowboard teams make the sport enjoyable.
“Our team is really closely knit and we’re all very tied together,” said Lesher. “After every single competition we all wait at the end of the runs for everyone to go down, so we can all see everyone.”