Cold and snowy times encroach upon the ISU campus, causing many sports clubs to find alternatives to their normal outdoor events. For the ISU Ski and Snowboarding Club, things are just getting started.

“The club [is] great for recreation and competition,” said club president Michael Harris, senior in mechanical engineering. “Skiing and snowboarding are things we all love to do and we have a ton of fun doing them.”

The recreation aspect of the club is where a lot of the fun happens, Harris said. Club secretary Austin Kolb agreed, citing it as the reason he joined the club.

“I went to a community college last year, but two good high school friends were in the ski club here,” said Kolb, a sophomore in marketing. “They took me on a club trip and I had a lot of fun. When I got to Iowa State this fall, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.”

The Ski and Snowboarding Club takes three of these particular trips per year, one each on Thanksgiving, Winter and Spring Break.

“We typically go out west for the trips,” Harris said. “They’re mostly for fun, but we also use them as a chance for the Race Team to practice.”

The Race Team serves as a competitive supplement to the Ski and Snowboarding Club, giving riders and skiers the chance to travel and vie for a regional title.

“I like being on [the Race Team] because it just gives me another reason to get out there on my board,” Kolb said. “We all love to have fun, but we also push each other to be the best that we can be.”

The Race Team competes collegiately in five races across the Midwest each year. In the 2009 and 2010 seasons, the team earned first place in its division for men’s skiing, women’s skiing and men’s snowboarding.

Beyond recreation and competition, the Ski and Snowboarding Club also emphasizes the social aspect of their gatherings.

“It’s a huge social club as well as sports club,” Harris said. “We do all kinds of things at our meetings: games, raffles and more.”

The social aspect is very important to club vice president William Reierson, who said it compelled him to join the club’s executive board.

“I joined the club right away freshman year,” Reierson, senior in industrial engineering, said. “There’s a lot of people you get to know on those long trips, and I really wanted to help progress that part of the club.”

The Ski and Snowboarding Club provides its members with all sorts of options, whether it is for fun, trophies or friends.

“The trips are great social events and they’re really fun,” said Kolb. “Being in the club and being an executive member, I’ve met some pretty interesting people made a lot of cool friends.”