2024 Interschools Event Planning

Dear Interschools Snowsport School Coordinators,

The 2024 Event Schedule will be published tomorrow to the wider community in an Interschools eNews. For your early review, you can find the schedule here. During the past six weeks, the Interschools Management Team has been busy developing the 2024 daily event schedules with our resort partners Perisher, Thredbo, and Falls Creek. In addition, we have extensively reviewed our Mogul event operations, and in 2024 we will move to trial a new approach with our Regional Mogul Events.

2024 Schedule Highlights

• In 2024, we will host a record seven championship events across Perisher, Thredbo, and Falls Creek.
• Our Championship events will be held over a total of 29 days, with 3 additional event days planned, the ‘Come and Try Interschools’ (June 30 at Perisher), the ‘Amelia McGuiness Foundation Time-Trial’ (July 29 at Falls Creek), and the ‘ACT Schools Cup’ (August 25 at Perisher).
• We are in event development discussions with the Australian Secondary Schools Snowsports Teams Championship (ASSSTC) management group (July 30 – August 1 at Falls Creek).
• Of note in 2024 is the introduction of a stand-alone NSW Regional Interschools Championships at Falls Creek (July 30 – August 2), to accommodate the growing Southern and South-West NSW areas, in a new non-school holiday event week.
• The Amelia McGuiness Foundation Time-Trial event day will move to Falls Creek in 2024, preceding the NSW Regional Interschools and ASSSTC Events.
• The South Australian, Tasmanian, and Northern Territory Interschools Championships will continue during the South Australian school holiday period at Falls Creek (July 17-18).
• The Australian Interschools Snowsports Championships returns to Perisher in 2024 and will be held over 6 full and exciting competition days.

We will endeavour to provide regular updates to all School Coordinators over the coming 6 month period, as 2024 event development continues.

The Snow Australia Interschools Management Team

Throughout 2023, we have examined ways to develop a sustainable and standards-based approach to the Moguls Events. School Coordinators will remember that for 2023, we altered some specific Mogul progression rules to ensure that ALL competitors invited to the STATE Championships had achieved a minimum standard. The following overview, whilst extensive, is specifically provided to School Coordinators to facilitate a broader community understanding of the directions we wish to trial in 2024.

Moving Forward

It is our intention to trial a new approach at REGIONAL (only) Mogul Events in 2024, with a commitment to evaluate this new direction at the end of season 2024, in collaboration with our school coordinators. Our central objective is to focus on the delivery of a quality and sustainable STATE and NATIONAL Mogul event experience, with the REGIONAL Mogul events to focus on identifying those individual competitors with the appropriate skill set necessary to progress to the STATE level Mogul events. To achieve this:

• The NTH NSW/QLD, SYDNEY, and ACT/RNSW REGIONAL Moguls Events in 2024 will become a NTH MOGUL ‘QUALIFIER’ event series.

• NTH Interschools will create an automatic STATE Event invite process for the Top 20 individual 2023 NTH STATE MOGUL competitors, to the 2024 NTH STATE MOGUL Competition. Those competitors will be considered as meeting the minimum competition standard and as such they are not required, nor permitted to compete at the 2024 NTH MOGUL QUALIFIER Events.

• NTH Interschools will publish that STATE MOGUL competitor invite list prior to the opening of the 2024 online event entry system.

• The 2024 NTH MOGUL QUALIFIER Event series will be held during traditional NTH Regional Event periods, to be held on 2 days only, per 4-day Regional Championship events.

• The 2024 NTH MOGUL QUALIFIER Event series will include a combined Primary (Div. 4 & 5) event on one day, and a separate but combined Secondary (Div. 3, 2, 1) event on a second day.

• The 2024 NTH MOGUL QUALIFIER Event series will focus on identifying competent Div. 5 to Div. 1 Mogul skiers wanting to qualify for entry to the STATE Mogul Championships.

• NTH Interschools will look to introduce NTH STATE Moguls event maximum event ‘quota’ numbers, which optimally would circle 300-350 in total at the NTH STATE event, on average 60-70 competitors per Divisions 1 to 5, and 30-35 competitors per gender in each Division.

• This quota minimum standards direction will have layers of flexibility to ensure both competitor progression and sport/event sustainability.

• The entry system for the 2024 NTH MOGUL QUALIFIER Event series will be via the Snow Australia membership/event entry system. Entries will be individual only, with no teams.

• Event Entry costs are yet to be determined, but will likely be lower than the Interschools entry fees to reflect the nature of the event.

• Each competitor will have a training period prior to the event (as usual), and have two judged runs (as usual), with the best-of-two-runs process to determine results.

• Results will be generated for STATE event selection purposes, but no medals will be awarded at these Qualifier events.

• NTH Interschools will develop and publish several event RULES of COMPETITION changes to accommodate the specific MOGULS QUALIFIER event series. These rule changes will reflect a reduction in the number of Judges from the current 3-4, to 2-3, and a stronger event focus on turn competency at the QUALIFIER event level.

2023 MOGUL Event BACKGROUND

Following the 2023 NTH REGIONAL Interschools Moguls Events, NTH Interschools implemented a (NTH Rules driven) provision to mandate a minimum (individual competitor) standard for NTH STATE Moguls event involvement. The result was a high standard and workable NTH STATE Moguls Event, at all Division levels. · This standards/competency-based direction was explained to the NTH Interschools Community as a news story on July 25.

NOTE:

• From the Regional Mogul Events, there were 25 Invites directly to the National Event from the smaller States > 19 x ACT / 5 x QLD / 1 x Tasmania.
• Of those 25 > 12 chose to compete at the STATE Event.