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Boys & Girls Club of Boston partners with Vail Resorts to add more diversity to the slopes
“Many of the young people that participate might not have otherwise had access to those winter sports.”
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Vail Resorts and the Boys & Girls Club of Boston, or BGCB, have created a partnership under the Epic for Everyone initiative to add more accessibility to snowsports, specifically for children of color.
In a 2023-2024 survey, Snowsports Industries America reported that over 30 million people in the United States participated in snowsports. Of them, about 13 percent identify as Black and 17 percent identify as Hispanic, which is a new high in numbers for both of these groups.
Programs such as the one with Vail and BGCB are introducing children to snowsports at an earlier age to increase the diversity of those on the slopes.
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“[The] majority of youth that this program serves identify as Black or Latino or BIPOC,” said Gabrielle Witham, the BGCB’s Director of Healthy Lifestyles. “We are able to get young people to the mountain who may have never otherwise had the opportunity.”
The club provides transportation and chaperones for the participants. They also provide base layers, ski jackets, and gloves so the children are comfortable on the mountain. In addition to a free ticket, Vail provides lunch and lessons for skiing and snowboarding.
Deirdre Riley, the general manager of Bennington, New Hampshire’s Crotched Mountain, the Vail mountain that hosts the club, hopes that this program will increase the number of people of color that get involved in snowsports by reducing barriers of getting on the mountain.
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“I always say we have to reduce the friction in anything we do, right? If you add friction, it makes things difficult to do,” said Riley. “Skiing isn’t easy. Like you have to park your car, you have to haul your equipment. So what can we do to help keep people wanting to come? … and if we don’t have something that the whole family wants to do. How do we get that? How do we get people who want to be involved and who want to come here?”
Riley says that she tries to make snowsports more accessible at Crotched Mountain by finding ways to make the whole process cheaper.
“Can we have inexpensive seasonal lockers? What can we do to make it easy to come here?” says Riley.
Throughout her career in the industry, Riley has seen an increase in diversity on the slopes. The rise was steady until the Covid-19 pandemic, where there was a spike.
However, she has not seen this everywhere. In Colorado, she noticed a lack of diversity compared to Crotched, as well as Vail’s resort in Park City. She thinks this deficiency stems from the cities that are closer to the mountains compared to Colorado, which takes money and time to get there.
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The partnership between Vail and BGCB gives Boston youth the opportunity to learn snowsports at no cost; a grant from Vail gives BGCB free lift tickets, rides, school instruction, meals, equipment rentals, and additional funding for staff and transportation necessary. This year, 108 young people from the five different clubs in Boston participated in the event, with 59 of them being returners.
“Many of the young people that participate might not have otherwise had access to those winter sports,” said Witham. “So, through the program, they’re learning technical skiing and snowboarding skills. They’re just gaining confidence on the slopes. They’re also getting exposed to career opportunities in snowsports. And they are getting the opportunity to return year after year to just advance their opportunities.”
Jhordan Keel, 15, a member of BGCB, says she gained confidence from the program.
“When I first went, I was kind of nervous to go on the mountains, the hills and stuff, because that was my first time going to that certain location,” says Keel. “When it comes to skiing, my confidence went a lot higher.”
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