The Ski and Snowboard club is one of the biggest clubs at Pennridge High School and has some great opportunities to offer to students. The club has been around since 1999 and is currently run by Jason Plawa and Ross Owens. Not only is it one of the biggest clubs at Pennridge, but it is also one of the biggest ski clubs in the area.

Central Bucks South does five Friday night trips to a “local mountain,” and Central Bucks West does four Thursday night trips to Blue mountain. Quakertown High School is only offering a discounted season pass to Blue Mountain this year, with no school-organized trips. Pennridge offers four Thursday night trips to Blue Mountain, a weekend trip to Vermont, and a trip out west over President’s Day weekend. The trip to Vermont happens over the weekend and is open to all four grade levels; it is usually to Killington, and in 2020 there were two Vermont trips. Plawa and Owens had plans for two Vermont trips this year, but there was only enough student interest for one trip to happen.

Plawa and Owens split the responsibilities of the ski club pretty evenly, as Plawa said they “divide and conquer”. They spend “hundreds of hours” planning these trips, especially from September to January when the trips are upcoming. They are both passionate about skiing and running the ski club is something that they love to do. Plawa described his favorite part of running ski club to be “interacting with kids outside of a school setting,” and “getting to know the kids.” The school board loves the ski club and there has always been a lot of interest, however, in the past few years interest has been down. This could be related to covid or the fact that not many kids know about the clubs Pennridge has to offer. All the clubs are listed on the canvas class of pages, but there is not a lot of awareness that they are there, and the descriptions are very brief. There used to be a club day in the cafeteria, where all the clubs would set up tables with papers for information for students to learn about clubs and join them. We haven’t done club day since covid, and from the perspective of a senior, club day got a lot more students’ attention and participation; now no one really knows what clubs there are at Pennridge.

The Blue Mountain trips and Vermont trips have been happening for over 20 years, however, the out west trips only started happening seven years ago, in 2016. The out west trip is a long weekend trip, from Thursday to Tuesday, over President’s Day weekend, and is only offered to Juniors and Seniors. When asked how he was able to start the trip out west, Plawa said, “ a group of kids came to me and said ‘how about we do a trip out west’, so I reached out to other schools and put together a proposal for the school board,” the school board loved the idea for the trip and it has now been happening for the past seven years. The trip is selective, only about 21 people go, including chaperones. With such a big trip, a smaller group is ideal, and students need to be able to ski well and have good grades to be considered for the trip. They have gone to Utah, Colorado, and Lake Tahoe, and these trips offer great opportunities for students to ski great terrain.

I talked to a former Pennridge student, Emily Osborne, who was on the first ever out west trip to happen. She liked how selective the trip out west is, she said “you don’t want kids to be struggling there”, while it is not the intention to exclude anyone from the ski club, kids who can’t ski that big of a mountain would have a hard time on the trip. When asked how she felt about the opportunities she got from Pennridge Ski Club, Emily said, “it allowed me to have my first experiences away from my parents, and to make new friends”. Emily described her high school ski club experience as “fantastic” and she thinks Plawa and Owens do a great job running the club and putting trips together.

Plawa and Owens work hard to make Pennridge Ski club the best it can be and offer opportunities to many students. The ski club has opportunities for all levels of skiers and is a great way to get involved in school and make new friends.

Sources:

https://www.cbsd.org/Domain/3610 

https://sites.google.com/site/cbwestskiclub/2022-dates-trip-procedures 

https://hs.qcsd.org/clubs/ski_club 

https://pennridge.instructure.com/courses/1153 

https://www.smore.com/6zm8t-pennridge-hs