Queen's Cup Open

Words by Kristi Giles

This year’s Queen’s Cup Open went off at Park City last Saturday and featured an especially impressive display of female trickery as well as the birth of “My Super Sweet Park,” a girls-only superpark event that was created as a reward for the coaches and first place winner. “All the girls deserve an opportunity to throw down and really show how hard they've worked and how much they've improved,” said event organizer Annaleah De Masi. “There's hardly any coverage out there showing their dedication and the level they've taken women's skiing to and since they're all here to support the next generation, I felt the perfect way to thank them is to plan a rad week to have fun, shred hard and give them opportunities that they haven't had before.”

The Queen’s Cup Open is designed to be a fun, low-pressure contest to help girls feel comfortable competing. But because it was one of the only big open slopestyle contests available to female skiers this year, a lot of girls traveled long distances for more than a good time.

The rail jam was canceled this year because there wasn’t any snow on Main Street until right before the event, and pipe was cut because, according to De Masi, “there are so many pipe competitions this year that [she] felt it'd be a better decision to focus on making the slopestyle awesome—plus the fact that every year [they] party so hard Saturday night, [she] thought sweating the booze out on-hill didn't sound as fun as sleeping in, making a fat breakfast and a manicure/pedicure session.”

The slopestyle went down in the Pick ‘N’ Shovel park in best-of-two-runs fashion. The girls were split into teams, with the invited pros as coaches. Everyone was scored individually, and then the each team’s scores were added up to determine a winner. This year’s team prize went to Denise Jaworksky’s team of Tiffany Davenport, Julia Marino, Shawndrea Wisma, and Shanny Cohen.

Kerry Daines took “best trick” with a 270 on, frontside switch up, blind 270 out on the flat down box. Carrie Rossman came in third with a switch 3 to switch 5 up top, a switch up on the down rail, and a 5 off the last jump, and Dania Assalay got second with a 3 to 7 to 5, she did a 3 to 9 in her second run, but she didn’t have enough speed to spin the last jump.

Maude Raymond took first with a 3 to 5 to cork 5, some lipslides and a switch up on the down tube, but she landed a cork 9 high reverse mute in practice, so that may have been part of why she won. For her efforts, she was rewarded with a Kicker Audio system, $500 cash, and an invite to My Super Sweet Park.

A “team spirit” award was given to 8-year-old Ashton Glass, the youngest competitor of the day. Some strings had to be pulled for her to compete because she was under the minimum age, but she got pole whipped into the jumps and cleared them—and even busted a 180.

“The level of riding definitely has improved ten-fold!” said De Masi. “It's gone from the girls barely knowing how to spin the first year to this year's sick 5s, 7s, 9s, mistys and rodeos, not to mention the steeze—that's been one of the most impressive parts.  It was mind blowing and I gotta give it up to Park City Mountain Resort for making a killer park!”

At the end of the day, there were supposed to be team runs…but that got scratched, and all the girls just rallied down to the deck of the last jump in a giant clusterfuck of an old school/random silliness train.  “It was amazing,” said Grete Eliassen, one of the coaches. "And I had my first four-girls-holding-onto-eachother’s-poles jumping experience.”

The My Super Sweet Park shoot is going on this week at Park City, but it looks like they’ll have a lot of new snow to deal with. De Masi said she’s been having fun experimenting with the event, so we can expect more surprises next year.

Results

1.  Maude Raymond
2.  Dania Assaly
3.  Carrie Rossman
4.  Erica Durtchi
5.  Veronica Kelly
6.  Amy Sheehan
7.  Angela Robinson
8.  Shawndra Wisma
9.  Tiffany Davenport
10.  Julie Marich

Best Trick: Kerry Daines
Team Spirit: Ashton Glass
Winning Team: Denise Jaworksky (coach), Tiffany Davenport, Julia
Marino, Shawndrea Wisma, and Shanny Cohen