{"id":806015,"date":"2020-04-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=381322"},"modified":"2020-04-03T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T15:00:00","slug":"qa-with-peak-performers-freestyle-skiing-runner-up-chris-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/qa-with-peak-performers-freestyle-skiing-runner-up-chris-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&amp;A with Peak Performers freestyle skiing runner-up Chris Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"410\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/04\/PeakPerformers2-SDN-040320.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/04\/PeakPerformers2-SDN-040320.jpg 410w, https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/04\/PeakPerformers2-SDN-040320-300x287.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\"><figcaption><strong>Team Breckenridge coach Chris Hawks sends it off a half-buried stand of bushes in Contest Bowl at Breckenridge Ski Resort in January 2017.<\/strong><br \/><em>Summit Daily file<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>DILLON \u2014 For almost three decades, Chris Hawks <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjHzOSn8MroAhXDr54KHUDRABYQFjAAegQIBhAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.summitdaily.com%2Fnews%2Fpeak-performers-nominee-chris-hawks-freestyle-skiing%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw2AA3lTswuAZHEL1k_V0Sws\">has been a mainstay as an athlete and coach in Summit County\u2019s freestyle ski community<\/a>. Now the director and head coach for Team Breckenridge\u2019s Freeride Team, Hawks finished as the runner-up in the freestyle skiing category of Peak Performers, a project <a href=\"http:\/\/summitdaily.com\/peakperformers\">honoring Summit County\u2019s top skiing and snowboarding athletes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coming from more rural New Jersey, what is your ski origin story?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My father and brother, both Richard, were always into skiing. So they would drop me off at the nursery at Belleayre or Hunter mountains in New York. \u2026 Back then, all we knew was racing, so I grew up as a racer and one day, I was about 15 or 16, we were at Killington, and I saw these mogul skiers, and I was like, \u201cMan, that\u2019s what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>What drew you to mogul skiing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row sd-donation sd-donation-mobile p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/SDN-logo-white-1.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/SDN-logo-white-1.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/sdn-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The air. I graduated high school in 1991, so then I started competing in moguls skiing. \u2026 And the challenge was pretty cool. I was a skateboarder too, and I was skateboarding in New Jersey. So when we went up to ski, the mogul scene seemed cool. I skateboarded every day, we were the first ones in our town to do any of that stuff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What was the freestyle scene in Breckenridge like back then when you moved here?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well Breckenridge had the World Cups, so we got to see and ski with the best skiers in the world, \u2019cause we got to help make the courses for them. Back then, Breckenridge even had the aerial site. So we had like a 7-foot tall jump 40 feet away from the knoll, so it was kind of like a park jump. Back then, there weren\u2019t terrain parks like now. And if there was, we weren\u2019t allowed to go in it, cause it was snowboarding only. So, yeah, the moguls scene was the thing. Our coaches were on the pro mogul tour, still competing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tell me more about freestyle skiing\u2019s evolution in the \u201990s<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What we\u2019d do was, our mogul course was over on Peak 9. That\u2019s where the terrain park was, on Gold King, and we just went in it anyway, not really knowing. I\u2019d never really seen a rail. I wasn\u2019t a rollerblader, but I\u2019d seen skateboarding. And we\u2019d try whatever and do 360s and things like that. And it was easier to hit those jumps than the mogul jumps, because back then, we\u2019d have to land in the moguls. There wasn\u2019t a nice spot to land. So you got dominated a lot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How did freestyle skiing become the sport it became?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So we were mogul skiing, and it was regimented. You couldn\u2019t do a 360 with your knees bent. And we started seeing Canadians doing tricks out on the wind lip in Whistler, and that\u2019s the point right there where the sport changed, grabbing front flips and back flips and things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>As an X Games triple big air gold medalist in 1999, take us in a time capsule to the event back then<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>It was definitely more of a freestyle for real. They had modified shovel racing as one of the contests. \u2026 Last place in 1998 was $700. So I was like, \u201cI\u2019ll do it.\u201d It was going to take all month to make $700 working at City Market. \u2026 So when I showed up (in 1999) me being the moguls skier and a regular skier, not in the whole roller-blade scene, wasn\u2019t that friendly. But I ended up winning (triple big air) because I landed and grabbed. Triple big air was three jumps in a row progressively bigger.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Connect the dots between the end of your career and your successful coaching career, now with Team Breck<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I started my first team in 2001, \u2019cause when I was working at City Market, parents had asked me \u2014 \u2019cause they knew I\u2019d been in the X Games, I was bagging their groceries \u2014 \u201cHey, my son just broke his arm on 6 Chair doing a backflip. Do you have any kind of a program for something like that?\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, I could.\u201d \u2026 So that\u2019s how it started. I had seven kids from Summit High. Then it just grew from there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What have you learned is the most important element of being a good coach?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The part that makes me the proudest, the coaches that I had when I was a kid, they were into it and gave everything to us, and that\u2019s what I try to do with my guys: Show them everything about the sport and my passion for it. Cause I want these skiers to ski for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/qa-with-peak-performers-freestyle-skiing-runner-up-chris-hawks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Team Breckenridge coach Chris Hawks sends it off a half-buried stand of bushes in Contest Bowl at Breckenridge Ski Resort in January 2017.Summit Daily file DILLON \u2014 For almost three decades, Chris Hawks has been a mainstay as an athlete and coach in Summit County\u2019s freestyle ski community. Now the director and head coach for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 08:50:21","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":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}