Winter's play

By Brent VonCannon
The Collegian

Many Fresno State students will be heading for the hills this winter to stay cool and strut their stuff on the snow.

The Ski and Snowboard Club, in its sixth year as a campus group, continues its appeal for new members — those who are secretly snow lovers underneath their warm winter jackets.

“We have 220 to 230 people signed up with the club this year,” said senior Jeremy Yager, civil engineering major and president of the Ski and Snowboard Club.

That’s a far cry from the group’s humble beginnings in 2000 with just four original members.

One of those four, Brian Furrow, is still with the club. Dubbing himself a “founding father,” Furrow, who plans to wrap up his marketing degree at Fresno State in the near future, serves as the group’s events coordinator.

Furrow remarked on how much the club has grown since he helped start it.

“We had only 30 members our first year,” Furrow said. He added that the group grew in membership rapidly, mainly through word of mouth. “Flyers around campus and MySpace have helped too,” Furrow said.

Besides the thrill of removing snow from your face after a hard fall, there are also monetary advantages to joining the club, Furrow said.

For example, Ski and Snowboard Club members get equipment discounts at sporting goods stores such as Copeland’s and Herb Bauer stores in Fresno. In addition, Sierra Summit offers season passes to club members for the discounted price of $229.

Yager, a skier, said there was a good ratio between skiers and snowboarders in the group. Even the club’s officers are fairly evenly divided between self-proclaimed skiers and snowboarders.

But you won’t hear a lot of argument about which sport is better, so long as there’s enough white stuff on the ground to keep everyone happy.

The ultimate idea, Yager said, is to “have fun and help each other learn.” Previous skiing or snowboarding experience is not required to join the club.

“There’s lots of camaraderie,” Yager said. “Lots of people don’t know how to snowboard, but they will learn from someone if they’re interested. Some people go up with just to go tubing.”

Yager said the club plans one big trip per semester. The first big one, for which members are paying $140 each for tickets and lodging, will be on the Thursday and Friday of finals week in December.

The destination is North Star resort at the north end of Lake Tahoe, a first for the club. Yager said the club has gone to Kirkwood resort for the last few years, but changed itinerary this year because of a better deal from North Star.

Additionally, the Ski and Snowboard Club makes several other, more local trips each semester, typically to Sierra Summit.

One new member of the club this year, Jason Lawler, a junior mechanical engineering major, said he’s been skiing most of his life, with his family and Boy Scout troop.

Lawler has been attending each of the Ski and Snowboard Club meetings so far, which started in October.

“We have to plan before the snow season begins,” Lawler said, acknowledging this area’s relatively short snow season. “But Tahoe gets more snow. I’m looking forward to the trip.”

For some veteran snow sports enthusiasts, such as Furrow, the North Star trip can’t come soon enough. But he stressed the need for ground conditions more favorable for the sports his group indulges in.

“We need a lot of snow and soon,” Furrow said.

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