First Day at SOS!

I just had my first day working with SOS last night, helping out the RPC Casey Shea with whatever she needed to try and make everything run as smoothly as possible for our Thursday night session, which is our largest of the season at around 80 kids total. It was fairly crazy at first, with "controlled chaos" being the best way to describe the process of trying to ferry kids in and out of our cramped storage room and get them set up with jackets, pants, goggles, and helmets as quickly as possible. As more and more kids came streaming through the doors, we found ourselves scrambling to pull dozens of pants from hangers after our main supply of pants quickly vanished. The sheer number of participants lent to a frenzied environment, but given the size of the group, I feel that we managed to set everyone up fairly effectively.

After the initial frenzy of set up, things calmed down a bit, as we were left to organize the remaining clothes, deal with any on-hill issues that arose, and prepare for the onslaught to come at the end of the day as lessons ended and clothes were returned back to us. Unfortunately, we had one on-hill injury right at the beginning of the night, as one kid, Eli, twisted his knee getting off the lift on his lift of the day. He kept us company in our storage room, getting aid and a makeshift cardboard splint from Ski Patrol, as we organized and boxed the leftover clothes. As lessons ended and kids began streaming back in, we rushed to make personalized hangers for each student to hang their jackets up for next week. We almost ran out of hangers, but it all ended well and we managed to get everyone taken care of without any major hitch. Once the dust had settled, we were left to hang up the pants, clean up the helmets, gloves, and goggles, and store away all of the bins of clothes in our little nook before calling it a night. Six hours after the day started, we were finally done. While we could definitely improve on some things next week to make things run smoother and quicker, given that it was our first day facing the daunting task of setting up 80 kids with all of the necessary gear to get onto the slopes, it was a success.