By Connor Smith
The Huntley High School Snow Raiders are entering their environment.
They’re in the midst of a two-hour busy ride to Alpine Valley in Wisconsin, where they can finally do what they’ve been waiting to do.
Like every trip, members are laughing and talking. The group is not quiet in the least, if anything. Some are singing songs on the ride and they make sure everyone gets involved in the group. Soon the members are sharing stories and experience. Some stories also teach the teens about basic safety. A single near-death experience reminds Jake about why a helmet is so simple.
“I crashed pretty hard and I ended up with a concussion,” he said.
But these experiences haven’t changed him in the least. He still pursues the thrill of snowboarding in the winter and skateboarding in the summer. The same goes for the majority of the Snow Raiders. They love the thrill of the sports, especially snowboarding. That’s why they’ve come here, to Alpine Valley, with a group of people who seemingly went from being strangers to the closest of friends.
The Snow Raiders are a band of students in pursuit of the best the snow has to offer them, and they have some of the best times any student could recall. They are led by Angela Zaleski, their sponsor. This year, Zaleski’s seen another spike in Snow Raider excitement and membership.
“Even on the first day of school, I had kids coming to me talking about how excited they were for the Snow Raiders’ events,” she said.
Zaleski has been the sponsor of the Snow Raiders for the past five years. Since she started snowboarding 15 years ago, Zaleski has made it goal of hers to help lower the cost of the sport after noticing its high costs. In fact, one of the primary goals of the Snow Raiders is to reduce the price of snowboarding and skiing for the members, given that a minimum price to start boarding from nothing is about $200, although some members spend as much as $1,000 on gear.
“With the Snow Raiders, they can potentially trade and buy equipment off each other and even go on trips for cheaper too, with a starting fee of $45 and $30 for every trip in the future,” said Zaleski.
Members are very pleased to see affordable prices to go on their sporting outings, thanks to Zaleski’s sponsoring of certain resorts, which cut prices into fractions of what they once were. This allows the Snow Raiders to go on trips more frequently with more members. Many new boarders are still slightly timid about joining the team, a small fear that they won’t be as good as the rest or won’t be able to keep up with friends.
If the Snow Raiders agree on one thing, it would have to be that no one should be intimidated about anything; everyone will do anything to get you up to speed with them. Some people on the first trip become timid about the test they must pass to determine their rank.
The rank system uses a circle for beginner, a square for intermediate, and a diamond for expert. The lower the rank, the less of the mountain you can use. But friends will always stick around for other friends. If one person has a higher rank than you, they just might stick with you the whole day instead of taking advantage of the full hill. Members will always be there to bond with one another. That’s what the Snow Raiders have been all about, after all.