On May 4 at Chapman Hill, Durango Winter Sports Club athletes, coaches, families and supporters will gather to celebrate an incredible season and remember beloved Alpine skiing coach Ian McKnight.
The end-of-season awards party will be a time for the Alpine, freeride, freestyle, snowboard and Gromlin club teams to come together and celebrate their success this winter. Each discipline will recognize athletes who demonstrated personal achievement, sportsmanship, resilience and dedication.
The winter held many significant accomplishments and highlights for DWSC racers, including having five different athletes win their age groups at the Southern Series Championship. However, Feb. 17 was a pause in celebration for the club. Ian McKnight, a Durango native and Alpine coach since 2019, passed away unexpectedly from complications of an epileptic seizure.
The Alpine team canceled practice the following day and came together around a fire at Chapman to acknowledge McKnight and the loss. The party on Sunday will be a time to celebrate the season and all that McKnight contributed to each athlete and to the team. DWSC will honor the legacy of McKnight by recognizing an Alpine athlete who embodied his teachings.
McKnight grew up skiing and Alpine racing at Purgatory. He had a strong racing career, dominated local races and proved to be a strong competitor in the national racing circuit. As one of the most successful athletes to come out of the Purgatory Ski Team, McKnight competed in the U.S. Nationals at the age of 17.
Over the course of his skiing career, McKnight, a downhill specialist, took several podiums in regional and championship races and competed on both the international Whistler Cup Team and the U.S. National Development Team. McKnight started his ski coaching career in 2011 with Telluride Ski and Snowboard Club, where he coached for eight years.
In 2019, McKnight began his coaching career at Durango Winter Sports Club. He was a key member of the coaching staff over the last six years and was known for his strong technical knowledge and deep passion for coaching the tactics and techniques of ski racing. McKnight’s full obituary can be found here: https://everloved.com/life-of/ian-mcknight/obituary/.
At the time of McKnight’s passing, the DWSC Alpine team was in full stride and experiencing much success. McKnight had just completed a travel weekend to Aspen for the Rocky Mountain Division (RMD) U12 Super G training and races. This event saw a number of athletes post personal bests and one athlete, Brynley Feistner, earned a podium with a third-place result among powerhouse teams such as Vail, Aspen, Summit and Steamboat.
The Alpine team, led by director Tyler Hoyt, had many other successes throughout the season, including earning the Southern Series Championship title as a team for the sixth consecutive year.
The Southern Series consists of three race weekends, hosted by the DWSC, Flagstaff Alpine Ski and Snowboard Team and the Taos (New Mexico) Winter Sports Team. Five athletes were Southern Series overall age group winners: Tobin Saffer in U8, Jett Winebarger in U10, Brynley Feistner in U12, Zaria Smith in U14 and June Scheid in U16.
DWSC’s freeride, freestyle and snowboard teams also enjoyed a strong season. Their results were shared in a prior article: http://durangoherald.com/articles/durango-winter-sports-club-ski-snowboard-teams-finish-season-strong/.
Hosting the end-of-season celebration at Chapman is significant. DWSC is fortunate for local partnerships with the City of Durango-Chapman Hill and Purgatory Resort, both of which are important training venues for athletes and have been symbols of the local community’s commitment to ski racing.
DWSC recognizes that coaches are the heart of everything the DWSC does. Losing a coach this season has been difficult for all who knew McKnight. Coaches pass the sport from generation to generation and keep the opportunity of being a winter sports athlete from the Southwest viable.
Maintaining this idea was a critical mission for McKnight. He has already played a huge role in helping many local kids become racers and his legacy will continue to be a crucial part of ski racing in Durango.
