BEAVER CREEK — January has been known among a group of ski and snowboard industry affiliates as “Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month” since 2007. But for Arn Menconi of Colorado-based SOS Outreach, the month-long mission extends much further.
In the course of 17 winters, Menconi’s nonprofit organization originally known as the Snowboard Outreach Society has introduced some 40,000 kids to snowboarding and skiing. And with more than 2,000 kids taking to the snow at 43 ski resorts across 14 states this January alone, SOS Outreach may well deserve MVP honors among the Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month players. Of course, it has no intention of quitting come February.
“We have a conversion rate of one-in-four of our first-time kids becoming lifetime skiers or snowboarders,” Menconi said. “That’s twice as high as the industry average over the long term. Short term, we tested out at around 60 percent at one time. So we think we’ve found a niche with these individualized sports.”
The SOS Outreach niche extends far beyond the sports themselves. Snowboarding, skiing and the summer sports of climbing, paddling and wilderness trekking the organization recently brought into the fold serve as the means to a much more purposeful end, an enticing hook to a more substantial outcome.
At SOS, skiing and snowboarding are the vehicles to character development in otherwise underserved youth. The five-day Learn to Ride program is too good to pass up for anyone with even a passing interest in snowsports, providing lessons, equipment and lift passes along with a taste of adventure in the Rocky Mountains. In return, participants sit through Menconi’s “Circle of Love” sales pitch on values and responsibility and are asked to perform community service.
For many, it’s the beginning of a journey, and the desire to return is recognized through a multiyear program of mentoring and practical life lessons leaving impressions lasting far longer than any tracks in the snow.
While harder to quantify, the conversion rate among some 40,000 potentially productive members of society is clearly making a difference.
“On the surface, it’s about teaching them to snowboard. But really, it’s about teaching them how to be productive adults,” Menconi said. “When I see kids giving back in their community and coming back after they don’t have to be in SOS — when they’ve already learned how to ski and snowboard and can do it on their own — but they’re doing it because they want to be in a leadership program, I call that success.”
Even those kids who might initially believe they’re scamming the system for some free snowboarding ultimately can’t escape the message of SOS Outreach’s five core values — wisdom, integrity, discipline, courage and compassion — heard just as often as the advice to “bend your knees.”
But most understand going in that it’s not just about snowboarding, and the maturity level among program participants is evident.
“We basically learn what the meanings of the core values are, how they are used and how we can incorporate them in our everyday lives — during school, during sports, any extracurricular activity. Anything we can possibly do, those five core values can be used,” said Zach Durbin, 17, a five-year SOS participant along with his brother, Matthew, from Eagle. “Snowboarding is a great thing to have, and it’s a fun sport to do all winter, but it’s not going to help me in life. I mean, yeah, I’m going to know how to snowboard, but basically, when it comes down to it, those five core values I’m going to use no matter what I do. I mean, in my job I’m going to have to use them; when I’m raising kids, I’m going to have to use them; anything I do in my life, I’m going to have to use them.”
“I apply the values to a little bit of everything — to snowboarding, to outside life, to work, to being at home with the family,” added Joey Hawley, 18, who rounded out the trio of advanced riders at an SOS program at Beaver Creek on Sunday. “All this stuff just put together as one makes a great person as you grow up and use the values. I think it would have taken longer to learn them without SOS. And without SOS, I’d probably be really bad at snowboarding. Really bad.”
