SBA's Sign Language students recently had a distinguished guest visitor, University of Nevada-Reno faculty member Emily Desfor.

"It was great fun signing with Joanne (Knox) and her class," said Desfor, a certified interpreter for the deaf who was contracted to interpret for both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

"They were enthusiastic to participate in all of the non-verbal activities that we did. Facial expression is extremely important in ASL for both grammatical and emotive purposes. Therefore, we focused on conveying information through facial expression and mime and then added signs. They have been working on signs for emotions. We had just a short time to talk about manual and non-manual aspects of signing and some of the cultural aspects that they have learned about."

"I appreciate Joanne's invitation and the warm welcome I received!"

SBA Parents' Weekend 2011 featured an address by noted psychologist and author Dr. Jim Taylor. In his address, entitled Positive Pushing, Dr. Taylor focused on the following question:

"Should I push my child?"

The emphatic answer, according to Dr. Taylor: "You must push your children. It's your right, it's your responsibility, it's your absolute moral imperative. What's important is how you push, when you push, and, most importantly, when to push back."

Taylor's address drew a distinction between negative "old-style" pushing and what he has dubbed "positive pushing." Old-style pushing is "negative, it's controlling, it's angry," and sends the message "if you don't live up to our expectations, we won't love you." Positive pushing, said Taylor, is "supportive, loving, encouraging, and sends a very different message: no matter how you perform, we will love you."

Taylor emphasized that he used the term "perform" rather than "behave" - actions, he said, do have consequences - and described the three pillars of happy and successful achievers: Self esteem, ownership, and emotional mastery.

One of the failings of modern society, said Taylor, is in not allowing children to fail.

"The most successful people in the world failed frequently and monumentally on the way to success. If you don't let your kids fail, they are not going to have self esteem."

Kids develop confidence and self esteem, Taylor argues, by failing - falling down, getting back up, and trying again.

"Ski racing is a wonderful sport for that, because there is a lot of failure."

Taylor educated parents about what he calls the "red flags of self esteem," and cautioned that parents should keep an eye out for these red flags. Signs of these red flags in their children should be, he said, a call to parental action.

U.S. Olympic downhill skier Daron Rahlves brought his star power to the Sugar Bowl Academy Performance Training Center Wednesday afternoon.

"This is like being home more and more," said Rahlves, who led the student-athletes from the Academy’s Alpine and Freestyle skiing disciplines through a grueling plyometric workout on the slopes of Sugar Bowl Resort's Mt. Disney.

Before, during, and after the intense workout, Rahlves provided SBA student-athletes with insights from his vast array of experiences with the U.S. Ski Team. He also reflected upon his role within the Sugar Bowl Academy community. "The Sugar Bowl Academy, it’s something that, if I had this when I was growing up this is where I would be," said Rahlves.

"I’m hoping to add a few things with my experiences through…training, racing in the World Cup and having some success there and passing it on. There are a lot of hard workers here, and if I can give a little help to make it run a little easier, that’s what it’s all about."

Rahlves spun a few tales from the professional skiing circuit for the SBA student-athletes, and also gave MVP awards to the hardest working male and female.

Female MVP went to SBA freshman Lauren Dunn, while male MVP went to SBA 2011 graduate Scott Cooper.

Sugar Bowl Academy cross country runners posted what Head Nordic Coach Jeff Schloss characterized as surprisingly strong results at the 2011 North Tahoe Kiwanis Invitational at Rosemont High School Friday. "We just finished two hard weeks of ski specific training so we went into this running race with no real running training under our belts," said Schloss. "I was pleased with how well everyone pushed even without the specific running training. We train for skiing first and then just jump into these races for training and it is pretty impressive how well everyone did."

Leading SBA’s freshman boys, Peter Carroll and Sam Zabell finished 7th and 14th, respectively, in the 4350-meter run. Lauren Dunn led the SBA freshman and sophomore girls with a 7th place finish in a field of 78 racers. Savannah Blide and Bria Riggs finished 36th and 37th, respectively. Cassidy Cichowicz led the girls’ Varsity squad in the 5300-meter race, finishing 15th, followed closely by SBA newcomer Laurel Fiddler, who finished 16th in a field of 125. Katrin Larusson (29th), Danielle Nivinski (39th), and Joelle Romo (55th), all finished in the top half and gave SBA’s girls Varsity an overall fifth place points finish among 14 teams represented.

This is the second year that Sugar Bowl Academy has fielded a cross-country team.

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