Hilary Rich reports on some outreach work with the STRIDE foundation. Find out more about STRIDE here.
On Mondays, some of the women’s team travels up to Bread Loaf to teach and ski with elementary school girls from Middlebury and Ription with the STRIDE Foundation. This week, Keely, Squirrel (Em Attwood) and myself trekked to Rikert and got the girls outfitted with gear, courtesy of Mike, John and the whole crew up there. Although the day started out a little cold, it warmed up by the afternoon and we were able to get out for a ski with 6 of the STRIDE athletes, ages 9 to 11. Keely and two of our veteran Ripton Elementary girls took off on Battell loop, while Squirrel and Rosie took their time and bonded over Squirrel’s love for Spiderman, I made it across the field with three of our new athletes who were skiing for the first time. There were some falls, and a few times when we had to extract a skier or two from a snowy ditch on the side of the trail, but we managed to have a great time while skiing through the new powder.
Some of those girls are my students! Yeah Middlebury! Thank you.