The 20-Minute Assessment That Makes Next Season So Much Easier

Most ski parents pack up at the end of the season and try to reconstruct where their kids left off come October, and that gap costs them days on the mountain every single year. In this episode, Jessica shares the end-of-season assessment she uses both as a PSIA-certified ski instructor and as a ski parent herself, so you can capture exactly where your kids are while it's still fresh. If you're serious about how to ski with kids in a way that builds real, lasting progress, this is the episode you didn't know you needed.

What You'll Learn

• Why doing a simple skills and terrain assessment at the end of ski season is one of the best family skiing tips you'll ever act on — and why waiting until fall means you'll be guessing
• The three-bucket framework every ski parent can use to teach kids to ski with intention: Mastered, Working On, and Still to Come
• The core skills to assess when evaluating children learning to ski — from balance and stopping to parallel turns and chairlift confidence
• How to document the actual runs at your local mountain so you know exactly where to start next season instead of starting over
• How to use your end-of-season notes in the fall to pick up right where you left off — the single biggest thing that separates families who make steady progress from those who feel like they're back at square one every year

Key Takeaway

"The notes you take right now are the bridge between this season and next. Don't skip the bridge."

Skiing with Kids is hosted by Jessica Averett, a ski instructor and mom of five who has spent more than 20 years helping kids learn to ski. This podcast helps parents create calmer, happier ski days by focusing on confidence, connection, and simple strategies that actually work with kids on the mountain.  She's the founder of First Tracks: A Parent's Guide to Teaching Kids to Ski, a course that walks parents through everything they need to know to skip overpriced ski school and confidently teach their own kids to ski.

Enjoying the Podcast?

Follow Skiing with Kids so you never miss an episode.

More Skiing with Kids Resources

For more tips, gear reviews, and ski parenting advice visit Skiing Kids
You can find me on Instagram @theadventuretravelfam
.

Free Guide for Ski Parents

Want to avoid the biggest mistakes most parents make when teaching their kids to ski?
 Download the free guide:

The Most Common Mistakes Ski Parents Make (and How to Fix Them)
https://skiiingkids.myflodesk.com/ffy45squub
This quick guide will help you avoid the common ski day meltdowns and create a much smoother experience for your kids on the mountain.

...

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Skiing with Kids. I'm your host Jessica, a ski instructor, mom of five, and someone who's seen just about every ski day meltdown that you can imagine. After 20 years of teaching kids on the mountain, I've learned that great ski days aren't about perfect technique. They're about confidence, connection, and knowing what actually works. And this podcast is where we break it all down. Hey friends. Welcome back to skiing with Kids as both a ski instructor and a mom of five. I am someone who has very strong opinions about what happens at the end of ski season. Now, I'm not talking about the last run or the apre that you took your kids to. Not even when you're loading the car with all that like wet, sloppy, spring ski gear. I'm talking about what you do in the days right after the season ends because what you do or don't do in that window, it's gonna have a direct effect on how the next season starts. And truthfully, most families do absolutely nothing. They pack up the skis, shove 'em in the garage, and then try to remember in November what last March felt like. Now I wanna change that for you today. Now here's the thing nobody does, because I work with families every single season and one of the questions I get most often in the fall, like a lot, is where do we even start? It's been so long. You guys, I get it. The gap bet between ski seasons is really long. Life happens, kids grow, they forget things. You forget things, and then you show up in December trying to reconstruct what your kid could and couldn't do nine months ago, and it feels like guessing. Now, here's the fix for that. You do your assessment now at the end of this ski season, while everything is still fresh. Not in the fall right now, because right now you know exactly what your kid can do. You know what clicked this season, you know what they're still working on, and you know which runs felt easy and which ones were a real stretch. You know, all of this today and in six months you won't know all of that with this kind of clarity. So today's episode is a framework for how to capture all of that before you lose it. Now this really matters more than you think because I've watched this happen over and over again, both in ski school and with my own kids. When families come back in the fall and they start from scratch, like with no plan, no memory of where they left off, they almost always start in the wrong spot. And typically, if they're skiing with their own kids, that's usually with things that are too hard now. This goes one of two ways. Either they're babying a kid who grew last season and is ready for more or more likely they're pushing a kid back into terrain that's above where they actually are. Now, both of those scenarios are gonna cost you both in your kid's confidence and in your time. Starting too easy is boring. Your kid's not gonna like skiing. A bored kid doesn't wanna be there, but starting too hard is overwhelming. And an overwhelmed kid is a kid who doesn't wanna be there either. But when you come into next ski season, knowing exactly where your kid is, what they've got locked in, what they're close on, and what they haven't touched yet, you can put them back exactly where they need to be. Honestly, it's not going to be right where they left off. It's gonna be a little below that just to rebuild the feel, the motion, the mechanics, all the things so that they have a smooth transition and a good progression. Your days are gonna be smooth. Your kids are gonna feel like a skier, not just like this beginner starting over, and that is a completely different experience for the whole family. Now let's talk about the end of ski season assessment because I wanna give you a simple framework that you can actually use this week while your season is still fresh. Now, there are two parts to this. The skills assessment and the terrain assessment both really matter and it takes maybe like 20 to 30 minutes to do. Um, but it's gonna save you a ton of confusion next fall. Now, part one is the skills assessment. When I evaluate a young skier, I am looking at a core set of skills, and these are the building blocks that everything else sits on top of. And I want you to sort them into three lists. Okay? The mastered. Things that they're already great at, they're working on and things that they still need to learn right now. Here are the skills that you're gonna assess, balance and stance. Are they standing in an athletic, balanced position? Um, hips over their feet, soft knees, hands forward? Or do they fall into the backseat every time things get hard? Gliding and straight runs. Are they comfortable with speed on a straight run, or does any movement of the skis create panic? Does it create resistance? Right? Stopping. Can they stop where they wanna stop? Now is this a wedge stop or is it a hockey stop or is it somewhere in between? Right? Um, turning. What kind of turns is your child doing? Are they doing wedge turns? Are they doing, um, parallel turns? Can they link turns well in both directions? Or do they have a dominant side? Um, do their turns change and the way they ski change when the terrain gets a little bit steeper? Or does it fall apart? Where are they in their parallel progression? Right? Are their skis just starting to come together or are they together all the time? Or is this something that like you're not even touching yet, right? If you have a kid that's new to skiing, um, you need to talk about like how they are on the chairlift with their loading and their unloading. A relaxed kid on the lift takes more runs and burns less emotional energy. Where are they on this? Um, also assess where their independence on the hill is, right? Can they ski without you showing them exactly what to do every moment? Or are they starting to make their own decisions, you know, with things like slowing down, um, navigating around other skiers, stopping when they need to? This one is as much about confidence as it is about skill. Now once you've talked about all of these different things here, I want you to sort these into your three buckets, and you've got clear, a clear skills snapshot for the end of the season, right? Things that they're mastered, things that they're still working on, and skills that they haven't gotten to yet. Now if you have my first Tracks program already, what I want you to do for your skills assessment here is I want you to go in and I want you to look at those printable skills, progression checklists. This is so much more detailed than you're probably going to remember on your own, but it has that minutiae that you're really going to be able to use to assess. All of these different technical aspects of what your kid can do. So this is the best starting spot if you have that program. Um, if you don't have the program, what I'm talking about is in first tracks I have. Massive skills, progression of skills that kids need to master at every level of skiing. Um, it has 10 to 15 different steps that are often overlooked, but can make a huge difference in how your kid actually gets from that beginner phase to the more technical and more difficult aspects of skiing. Now part two is the terrain assessment. Now this one is maybe even more practical because it takes the abstract, um, how are they skiing and ties it to something concrete. The actual runs at the mountains. You skied this winter, and this is the thing that most parents almost never think to do. They remember, oh, we skied some greens and a few blues. But they might not remember which greens, they don't remember which blues felt fine and which ones were a stretch, right? Because sometimes I'll be honest, as a ski parent, all of those seasons, they just blur together. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to write down every run your kids ski this season that you can remember. And for each run, I want you to capture three things. How did they ski it? What did they do well on? And is it totally mastered or is it a work in progress? Now I'm gonna give you some examples of what this looks like using generic mountain features. Since every resort is really different right now, it might be the beginner groomer off the magic carpet, skied it confidently by midseason. Good speed control makes intentional turns in both directions. Mastered first day of the next season, we're going to use this as a warmup run. Uh, maybe it's gonna be the long winding green from the top of the beginner lift. They were really good on the flatter sections. Um, they get a little bit speedy on the steeper pitches and defaults to the wedge for stopping. That is a work in progress. Great run to use next season to develop speed con speed control. Um, another one might be a short, blue, easy groomer that we tried at the end of the season. They made it down twice. They were nervous at the top, better by the bottom. The steepness definitely was a stretch, but not overwhelming. It is a work in progress. Good early season goal for next year. Another run might be the blue one. We tried twice and it was way too much, too steep, too crowded. Ended in tears, not ready. Do not start here next season. Do you see what I'm getting at here? This is so much more useful than just trying to remember in November how things went. Right. It's a, a really good way to do this is to just get out a trail map of where you skied. List the runs you went down so you have a specific frame of reference for next season. Um, you could even color code it. You could like print it off color, code it with things that are mastered, work in progress or haven't gotten there yet. Um, now those mastered runs, you guys, these are the ones that you really want to hang onto because those are gonna be your opening moves for next ski season. You do not start, um, with something new on day one of next year or something that they. Haven't quite figured out. You wanna start with something that your kid has already done successfully because you want them to feel like a successful skier immediately, and then you build from there. Okay, so how do you actually use this in the fall? So you've written down your assessment, you've got your list, you've got your terrain notes. Now what the most important thing you can do is put them somewhere where you'll actually find them. Um, your phone notes a Google Doc. An email you send to yourself with the subject line ski season notes. Do not delete. I don't really care where. Just somewhere that you can pull it up. Fall when you are planning your next ski season so that when you get to that first day of your next season, you can open it up. You are going to start with the mastered skills. You don't wanna start with something that they're still working on because they need to get that confidence. First thing. You don't wanna be too boring, you don't wanna pee too hard. You wanna play it smart, right? That first day is not the time for new skills, new terrain. You wanna remind your kid that they know how to do this, that it feels good and easy and fun. You're gonna run the skills that they've already got, ski the runs they've already done. Let them build the confidence before you ask them for more. And then maybe by like the third or fourth day when you can see that they're back in their body skiing with ease. Definitely when they're having fun, start introducing the things that they were working on at the end of this season. This is your first real teaching goal. Bridge the gap from where they were to where they are now. The still to come list is your long game plan. These are the things that you'll be working toward across next season. And because you wrote it down, you already know what the progression looks like. You're not guessing your coaching. Now, what does this actually look like with my own kids? Because I do this with my own kids as well every season. But I'll be honest, I didn't always right. I used to kind of just hold it all in my head and then I'd show up in November and think, okay, wait, which kid was skiing hard blues last year? I. Um, did they work on edging last year or the year before, or did I just hope that we got to it I mean, guys, I have five kids, so it's always a lot of information to juggle, but even if you have one or two kids, this is really, really valuable because it all kind of just blurs together, right? So now I make my notes at the end of every ski season, right? For each kid. It takes me like maybe 20 minutes, but it changes how we start every ski season, right? Now, this year my youngest made a huge jump. He went from reverting into a wedge whenever things got steep to a more solid parallel. His confidence grew on salt, steeper terrain, and he was able to finally relax and actually ski it. Better, which was a huge deal. Now that's gonna go in the notes and I'm gonna write down which runs he was able to confidently ski a parallel on, and which runs, he would get more nervous and fall back into that wedge because I wanna remember what he already did specifically. So I can say, Hey, on this run I know that you can do this. Well, he's not gonna need me to. Build up his confidence. He's not gonna need reassurance that he can do it because he already knows. I just need to remind him right now. That's the gift of writing it down. This is not just for you, it's for them. It's proof of who they already are on the mountain. Now you guys, I don't mean to like pressure you, but the window is closing here. And I really mean this right now, like this week, um, at the latest this month. You can remember a lot of this really clearly. This is when you're gonna remember the day that something clicked or that there was a run that was too hard, or when there was a skill that finally showed up that you were working on all season. You've got all of that in your head right now. Give it six months and you're just gonna have little bits and pieces, impressions, um, like the overall vibe, but not the details. Now ski progress is made over the course of multiple seasons, and seasons are long gaps with a lot of life in between. The notes you take right now are the bridge between this season and next, so don't skip that because it's a huge tool to help your entire family. Now, even if you do nothing else from this episode, just take 20 minutes this week, write down what your kid can do, the runs they skied, the stuff that clicked and the stuff that didn't. That document will be worth more than you think when you open it in the fall. Now the families that I see who are making the fastest, most consistent progress with their, with their kids aren't necessarily the ones with the most days on the mountain. They're the ones who are paying attention to the details, who know where their kid is, who aren't starting from scratch every season because they tracked what happened last time. Now. That is what today's episode is really about, not just for assessment, for assessment's sake. It is about continuity from one season to another. It's about treating your kids' ski development, like it actually matters now, not just in the moment, but across the span of multiple seasons and years, right? Because our goal is that we want our kids to ski for the rest of their life, and the foundation you're building now is going to carry them a really long time. So do the assessment. Write it down, put it somewhere where you can find it and come back to it in the fall. Now, if you are feeling totally lost, you want a good place to start and you're like, I don't even know what things we worked on, I don't even know what to assess. My course first tracks is definitely for you. It is going to give you those progressions and those details that you really need to think about and focus on so that you can help your kid move from one level to the next. So that those seasons can smoothly transition from one to the other. That is the whole goal. Now if this was helpful, please share it with another ski parent who's also wrapping up their ski season. I hope this helps you have a better start next season and a good way to finish this season, and I'll see you out there on the mountain.