February 2001
The weather was warm and sunny as the USASA North Lake Tahoe Series came
to Diamond Peak. Located on the shores of Lake Tahoe above Incline Village
Nevada, Diamond Peak is a family friendly resort that has stepped up their
park this year to serve the growing snowboard and freestyle skiing population.
The very large turnout for this USASA series continued and even as things
went smooth, it took until after 6pm to finish the awards. Some of the youngest
and oldest divisions did not get any late practice runs and had their scored
runs after 3:30. They also ran out of medals again.
It is easy to point these things out and it is definitely not easy to run
these contests as the amount of participants are swelling. 75 used to be
a good turn out when all of Tahoe was one region. They grew too big when
over 100 contestants showed up and the USASA formed North and South Lake
Tahoe regions. There have been 120 to 150 at most freestyle events this
year on the North Shore and the growing pains have been evident. The GS
race on Sunday was a breeze with only 60 or 70 racers. I bet the South Shore
series is popular too as snowboarding is now officially mainstream.