{"id":21538,"date":"2020-02-21T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/news\/of-nscd\/"},"modified":"2020-02-21T09:53:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T16:53:00","slug":"50-years-of-the-national-sports-center-for-the-disabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/50-years-of-the-national-sports-center-for-the-disabled\/","title":{"rendered":"50 years of the National Sports Center for the Disabled"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Athletes who race with the National Sports Center for the Disabled learn a lot more than skiing.<\/strong>
<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Inside Erik Petersen\u2019s office at the National Sports Center of the Disabled hangs a handful of lanyards \u2014 the nice, expensive kind with thick laminate and heavy bands sturdy enough to take the weight of commemorative pins.<\/p>\n

And neatly lined up across the bands on these lanyards are scores of those pins from the Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia; Vancouver, Canada; PyeongChang, South Korea and beyond.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a medal count of sorts for Petersen, director of the NSCD\u2019s Competition Center. The Competition Center\u2019s athletes have done rather well over the decades, winning more than 225 medals since the NSCD started participating in the Paralympic Winter Games in 1980.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, every time one of the athletes procures the hardware \u2014 gold, silver or bronze \u2014 Petersen wants a pin for the collection.<\/p>\n

The pins are a little reminder of some of the athletes Petersen has worked with \u2014 more than 300 during his tenure with the NSCD \u2014 and it\u2019s a fun way for him to track some of the success at the NSCD. But if you ask Petersen, there are far better ways than medals to measure the work happening at one of Grand County\u2019s farthest reaching nonprofits.<\/p>\n

One might be its amazing longevity, as the NSCD is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Another could be the more than 4,000 children and adults living with disabilities who participated in over 18,000 lessons with the NSCD in 2019.<\/p>\n

And the NSCD isn\u2019t just for skiing either. Over the years, the organization has grown from providing adaptive ski lessons to offering more than 20 adaptive sports and recreation programs year-round.<\/p>\n

Over the past five decades, the NSCD has provided service to more than 150,000 children and adults who are living with disabilities and want to enjoy sports and the outdoors.<\/p>\n

A couple of reasons the NSCD can do this are its close relationship with Winter Park Resort, the volunteers who\u2019ve logged nearly 1.4 million hours over the years and the thousands of donors who continue to support the nonprofit\u2019s operations, programming and engineering of new adaptive sports equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only do we provide world-class training, we\u2019re also here for quality of life,\u201d Petersen said of the NSCD. \u201cThere are athletes who come through our program who will never have the opportunity to go to the Paralympic games\u2026 but they love to be part of the program and they really endeavor to make themselves better human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

lessons learned<\/p>\n

Born in New Zealand, Adam Hall is a member of his country\u2019s disabled ski team. However, with such a short season over there, he trains at Winter Park.<\/p>\n

More than anything, Hall is grateful for the NSCD and everything the organization has done for him \u2014 and it\u2019s done a lot.<\/p>\n

Hall has been working with the NSCD for 16 to 17 years, and he has been a member of its Alpine Ski Team for over 12 years now. There\u2019s no shortage of awards and medals that Hall has won, and a number of the pins on the lanyards in Petersen\u2019s office came via Hall, who raced in the Winter Games in 2006, 2010 and most recently in 2014. He is now training for 2022.<\/p>\n

Athletes from seven different nations train at the Competition Center, including New Zealand, and Hall said it\u2019s like \u201ca big family\u201d of the camaraderie that exists among the NSCD athletes.<\/p>\n

Like most athletes, it\u2019s been an honor and a privilege for Hall to represent his country. All the medals and awards he\u2019s won are another nice reward for the hard work he\u2019s put in, but Hall knows the benefits he\u2019s received from the NSCD extend far beyond any podium he\u2019s ever stood on.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou learn a helluva a lot through the program,\u201d he said. \u201cIt teaches you \u2014 you know I was 15, 16 when I first started coming here \u2014 so the amount of life skills the NSCD has taught me through the program and through the sport is something I wouldn\u2019t have learned any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
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The Wells Fargo Ski Cup raises anywhere from $250,000-$300,000 every year for the National Sports Center for the Disabled, one of Grand County\u2019s most well known and farthest reaching nonprofit organizations.<\/strong>
Courtesy Diane Eustace \/ NSCD<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

NSCD in action<\/p>\n

Starting today, the NSCD will host its biggest fundraiser of the year, the Wells Fargo Ski Cup, which runs through Sunday at Winter Park Resort. The ski cup raises awareness for people with disabilities and serves as the biggest fundraiser of the year for the NSCD.<\/p>\n

Annually, the ski cup generates anywhere from $250,000-$300,000 to support the NSCD\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

In this year\u2019s cup, 27 corporate teams, each with an adaptive athlete on their team, will compete in Saturday\u2019s races. Putting NSCD athletes on the corporate teams helps add an awareness component to the races, Petersen explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey ride the lifts together. They eat lunch together. They win together. They lose together,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s neat because it\u2019s a camaraderie where those corporate teams get to learn a little bit more about what\u2019s going on not only at the NSCD but also with the individual. Sometimes they build lifelong relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, there will be races between all the competitive athletes invited to this event, which is why they call it the World Disabled Invitational. As an eight-time winner at the Wells Fargo Ski Cup, Hall will be competing in events on both Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always, I think, a great event to showcase what the program\u2019s about,\u201d he said of the Wells Fargo Ski Cup. \u201cYou get people from all walks of life. There are a lot of people within society and all over the world who have some kind of sickness or have become injured, and it\u2019s not until they see that exposure (with an event like this) that they know there are other people in the world like me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some tough times at the beginning because you think there\u2019s nobody else like you out there, but then you see what the possibilities are through a program like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more about the NSCD, http:\/\/www.NSCD.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Athletes who race with the National Sports Center for the Disabled learn a lot more than skiing. Inside Erik Petersen\u2019s office at the National Sports Center of the Disabled hangs a handful of lanyards \u2014 the nice, expensive kind with thick laminate and heavy bands sturdy enough to take the weight of commemorative pins. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 14:22:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}