HEAD OF SCHOOL

Our students working with Active Motion Spine & Therapy

It is hard to believe that it is already March as all of our programs continue to travel around the country collecting content & stacking up medals. Students have been balancing out their time on the road with academics which has continued to yield results with more college acceptance letters coming in from Gonzaga, the University of Denver, George Fox, the University of Utah & Sierra Nevada University. Not only are these students being accepted to four year universities, many of them are receiving scholarship opportunities. The snow has continued to pile up on the mountain which is building up for an exciting summer so please make sure to reserve your dates if you are planning on joining us because space is limited. All of the students are back in the classrooms now in order to fully maximize their time on campus before they are back on the road. Both snow & mountain bike athletes are busy getting ready to compete against the best athletes in the country at their respective National Championships & we wish them all the best of luck. Graduation is just around the corner as well, so please keep an eye open for updates from Luke & Kayla with more details. Thank you for sharing these amazing kids with us!

-Mike Hanley

ACADEMICS

February was a month full of trips. Students worked towards completing all of their work for the duration of the trips before each departure. Thankfully, Covid hospitalization numbers have decreased, and all students have returned to the classroom! We are halfway through the semester now, so expect Midterm Report Cards in your email.

As a reminder, we are offering the SAT on campus during the school day: March 23rd. Please reach out if you would like your student to take this standardized test and please supply your student with a graphing calculator well in advance.

This year we are also making a yearbook! The Chief Editors are Kennedy Lamer and Mike Nilan. Yearbook orders are due on April 4th. A small portion of each yearbook purchase is a fundraiser for the academy, so multiple orders are encouraged. Look out for order information next month.

Madison Weisman earned Student of the Month because she consistently works ahead of pace, is always punctual, and submits high quality work.

John-Michael Ajemian earned Student of the Month because he arrives early to class, he completes all work due before traveling, and his grades have been consistently improving.

-Kayla Hoakenson & Alexis Buzzel

STUDENT LIFE

This past month flew by. On the residential side of things we had a full schedule of weekend activities. Weekends have included bowling, thrift store shopping, rock climbing, hiking in the gorge, exploring downtown Hood River, laser tag, axe throwing and mini golf. In addition, students have been doing an excellent job keeping their cabins clean. Another exciting aspect of residential life is that students get to go night skiing up at SkiBowl once a week, which has been a blast! Night skiing at Skibowl includes the rope tow which has been an excellent place for students to take hot laps through the park. We have continued to hold weekly student representative meetings which has continued to be a place where students have continued to grow their leadership skills. Looking forward to this next month we have more exciting weekend activities planned and we are excited to continue to support students growth through people place and passion here at Wy’East Academy.

- Netanya Beard, Luke Giacopelli, Barbara Edwards, Will Stephens & Levi Thompson

MOUNTAIN BIKING

Our trip to Bootleg Canyon, NV and Virgin Utah was one for the books! We saw multiple podiums in Bootleg with JT Fisher winning the Enduro race, Etan Bravard coming in 2nd in expert junior downhill, Erin Bixler getting 3rd in Enduro pro women, Jack Probasco and Curran Lawrence going 2nd and 3rd in Dual slalom, Erin Bixler and Brooke Anderson going 1st and 2nd in women's slalom, and Brooke taking 2nd in junior women's downhill. Adrian Betancourt saw huge improvements while out in Bootleg and ended up doing the most laps out of anyone. The team carried themselves well while there and the event coordinators were stoked to have us come race.
While in Virgin, the kids pushed themselves daily and we saw huge progression! Erin Bixler dropped into a chute that most riders would not even think of doing. She also conquered a chute that she attempted and crashed last time in Virgin and was able to stomp it. Quinn Kaluza was putting on a boosting clinic out there, jumping higher than all the kids on a left hip jump. Jack Probasco, Curran Lawrence, Harper Simon, Taylor Dunn, Etan Bravard, and Josh Hanson all saw huge improvements and received compliments from some of the top name freeride pros. They had a morning jump session with Reed Boggs and Jaxson Riddle. You may see some of these kids in an RV commercial on TV, as the director of a commercial took a few shots of the kids as they were riding!

Now we are off to crush it in Windrock!!-Asa Howe & Kevin Simpers

SKATEBOARDING

We've been trying to get off campus and skate at least 2 days a week. Considering the winter season we've still been lucky enough to get some sunny sessions in which we've spent our time checking out some local DIY skateparks and other spots built by skateboarders. There's a lot of cool new spots popping up all around the city. One of our favorites is the PSU courts. The PSU courts is an old abandoned tennis court section that the school has been allowing skateboarders to build obstacles on and it's super fun! In addition, we've hit the usual go to skateparks and recently even got the invite to skate a friend of mine's private backyard bowl!

Besides having the option of skating BOB on rainy days we've still managed to get some grinds elsewhere like some covered parking garages that we recently found and a cool DIY parking lot under the 405 bridge. These spots have lots of curbs so the kids have been spending lots of energy working on different variations of slappy grinds as well as perfecting their ollies and manuals!

Last week we cruised out to Seattle for a quick three day trip. The weather was cold but was sunny and dry! We took I-5 north on the way up there and hit every park we could on the way! The next day some of the parks were a bit frosty so we started out at a coffee spot Madison wanted to check out. By 10.00 a.m. the parks were beginning to thaw out and skateboarding was back on! We skated several parks all throughout the day and ended it with a nice Pho dinner. The next morning we hit two of the new Seattle skateparks and then went and checked out this cool cupcake spot that was also on Madison's bucket list. One final stop to the South park skatepark before our voyage home. The South Park skatepark is absolutely insane. It was built to look like a Mayan calendar from the sky. Everything in the park is symmetrical and is much different than your average skatepark! In total we skated 12 skateparks in 3 days!

- Jamie Weller

SNOWBOARDING

This past month for the snowboard team started and ended with some incredible trips, along with some major highlights here on campus in between! While we were up in Washington at the beginning of the month riding Snoqualmie, Mt. Baker, and Crystal, we stopped in Bellingham on the Western Washington University campus to get a feel for what life would be like if they decided to study there. That campus is nestled up on a hill overlooking the town with views of the ocean that are the quintessential Pacific Northwest. We also spent time in Seattle exploring Pike Place Market and taking the team up top of the space needle for sunset. That trip up to Washington had pretty much everything you could ask for in a short amount of time; creative and high energy park riding at Snoqualmie, challenging and intense terrain at Mt. Baker, then a perfect spring-like day at Crystal to finish it off.

We then came home to Oregon and were greeted with more spring-like conditions that did not disappoint to prepare for the USASA slopestyle event happening just before heading out of town again on our Idaho & Utah trip. Everyone on the team has been upping their level of riding with trick progression, style and creativity, and it truly shows. Those who competed at the USASA slopestyle earned almost every gold and silver medal available to them, representing the academy in great fashion. I’m happy to say that everyone competing has also qualified for USASA Nationals in Colorado later this year and will battle it out with the other top ranking athletes in the country!

We finished off the month on the road heading East with a stop at Bogus Basin in Idaho on our way to Salt Lake City. For those unfamiliar with Bogus, it is 45 minutes outside of Boise and now owns some of High Cascade’s classic park features. It was very cool to show the team a new resort that has features with such history. Our time in Utah was spent going between Woodward Park City, and Brighton; both resorts offered some of the best terrain for our team to ride. From an athletic standpoint, the Idaho and Utah trip was very productive as almost everyone was taking full advantage of filming and creating social content in these new places. The team also saw the locations of the University of Utah campus, and Westminster College while in Salt Lake. Quite possibly the biggest highlight of the trip was when our crew was invited to get a behind the scenes tour of The Bomb Hole Podcast studio to see how and where that show is produced! The kids got to sit in the booth, in the same seats that snowboarding icons and legends have previously been, and get a feel for what it’s like to be a part of the biggest podcast in the industry. The opportunities that we’ve been able to create this year have been pretty spectacular and this team is lucky to have the support system that they do.

-Brandon Sorel

FREESKIING

February was an epic ride on the Freeski Team. We were blessed with endless sunshiny days throughout the whole month making for ideal training and leveling up. Brian and I divided and conquered most of the month with some of the team in Colorado and the rest of the crew here in Oregon.

The Colorado squad spent a week in Aspen training and competing on the X Games course getting first hand experience on the exact course you see on TV. Following Aspen was the third stop of the Futures Tour at Copper Mountain. The week at Copper was filled with plenty of time on bigger jumps and the whole team skied great and put down solid runs where 3 of the 5 made it to finals.

For the crew in Oregon we maximized our days on the volcano putting in reps on the core fundamentals while having progression at the forefront of our daily mission. Utilizing our trampolines and campus airbag students were able to safely attempt some new tricks before taking them to snow. The consistent sunny weather gave us forgiving slushy snow conditions making for even more progression for the whole team. We did a Wy’East Academy FIRST, where we spent an entire day on hill starting at Timberline then Meadows and then ended the day at the Skibowl ropetow park. The smiles were wide and the legs were burning by the end.

Towards the end of the month we competed in a local USASA double up SlopeStyle Event at Meadows where nearly the whole team ended up on the podium in their specific age group. After the event at Meadows we made our way to Bogus Basin in Idaho for a content creation trip. We got a nice mix of sun and snow and conquered both the park and the entire mountain as a team. We even got to hit a fun street spot for everyone to try their hand at landing some tricks out of the park. Moving into March the team camaraderie is at an all-time high and we couldn’t be happier to see what lies ahead for everyone.

-Topher Newett & Brian McCarthy