Next weekend – Friday, January 26 to Sunday, January 28 – the Mildura Ski Club is hosting its Ski School where kids aged five to 17 years can partake in water activities on the banks of the Murray River while learning from experienced coaches and hearing from guest speakers.
The program gets kids from all over Victoria and New South Wales, with seven-year-olds from Menindee and Bono Station making up two of the participants already registered and heading to Mildura for the two-night stayover.
While admitting the number of participants who have signed up is the lowest the Mildura Ski Club has ever had, Vice-President Samantha Hedley confirms the event will still go ahead for the first time in two years after river floods and Covid meant it had to be cancelled in 2022 and 2023.
With more coaches than ever available to teach kids all about skiing, the Ski Club is hoping that reaching out to communities far and wide, including Broken Hill, will bring about some keen skiers stepping out of their comfort zones while having fun on the water.
“It’s a really good location for kids to learn from. It’s a good camp for confidence boosting,” Ms Hedley told the Barrier Truth.
“It’d be awesome if we could get some Broken Hill kids or some Barrier Ranges kids to come down and just spend two days on the water and have fun. It would be great to get more kids to come along to try something different, come down to Mildura and have a really good weekend. All we want is to build confidence and for them to make friends.
“You don’t have to be an amazing skier to come along and partake. You might just start at kneeboarding and you’re showing a little bit of interest in wakeboarding, or you might be just slaloming and move over to wakeboarding. We just encourage kids to just have a try and if you’re scared, you’re not alone.”
Friday night starts with a meet-and-greet with the participants and their families at the Ski Club before heading to their accommodation in Gol Gol. On Saturday, a guest speaker will chat to the group before they take part in first response training and first aid training on river safety.
The day continues with the arrival of the coaches and boats, signalling the start of three water sessions based on wanting to learn or upskill their techniques with a particular ski type including slalom, wakeboarding, hydrofoil, barefooting, or ski racing.
“We try and utilise the river as much as possible, so they’re transported over on a party barge, and then we’ve got lots of stuff planned for them throughout the day,” Ms Hedley said.
“What we encourage the kids to do is set a goal or multiple goals for the day, and then they’ll tick off those goals as they go through. Usually by session one they’ve already achieved their goal or goals. So they’ll sit down, set some more goals and go again for session two. There’s the third session of the day where usually we just try and make that a bit more fun.”
The price for the Ski School is $200 per child. However, the Mildura Ski Club is running a special where members can get 50 per cent off the fee for the camp which includes food, travel, and accommodation. For more information, contact Ms Hedley on 0408 893 189 or email [email protected].
