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award winners die
2003 awards
2002 awards
Telluride awards report
Diana Hunt, VP Awards
Harold
Hirsch awards
Carson
White Golden Quill Award
Lifetime
Achievement Award
Bob
Gillen Memorial Award
Outstanding Competitor
Award
The annual Harold S. Hirsch Awards for Excellence in Journalism had winners in five categories this year. As their prize, first place winners got their registration paid to the Telluride convention. NASJA pays the registration fee at the annual meeting for Hirsch winners.
Magazine: Winner - Hilary Nangle, Waldoboro, Maine. Honorable Mention - Jay Cowan, Snowmass, Colorado.
Hilary is a freelance ski and travel writer and editor. Her works have appeared in regional and national magazines, books and newspapers. She appears regularly as a travel expert on a Portland television news-magazine show.
Newspaper: Winner – Marty Basch, Center Conway, New Hampshire. Honorable Mention – Bob Cox, Torrance, California; Patricia & Robert Foulke, Lake George, New York.
Marty is the winter sports correspondent for the Boston Globe, a syndicated columnist and a freelance writer. He has written two books on cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Prior to writing about winter sports, Marty was a CBS radio reporter based in the Middle East.
Columns: Winner – Bob Cox, Torrance, California. Honorable Mention – Martin Griff, Ewing, New Jersey.
Bob Cox is the first person in the 41-year history of the Harold Hirsch Awards to be recognized five times. He writes regularly for the Mammoth Times in Mammoth Lakes and for the Torrance newspaper, The Daily Breeze.
Web site: Winner – Vicki Bancroft, South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Honorable Mention – Mitch Kaplan, Fair Lawn, New Jersey; Shannon Luthy Lukens, Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Vicki began her writing career after answering a classified ad in a local newspaper. Recently, she received her Master’s Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Massachusetts.
Films /
TV broadcast: Winner – Josh Murphy, Tahoma,
California.
Josh has been involved in freeheel skiing (the new version of telemark
skiing) since 1989 as a competitor, a marketing pioneer and an award
winning filmmaker. He was the Eastern Telemark Mogul Champion in 1993.
He launched his film career in 2000; his award-winning film, “Free Time,” was
his third film.
This year’s
Carson White (first president of what was then the U.S. Ski Writers Association)
Golden Quill Award, given to an individual or individuals who have made
an outstanding contribution to the advancement of snowsports in North America
went to Ernie and Rhoda Blake, founders
of Taos Ski Valley. Specifically, the award highlighted their creation
of the famous Taos Ski Week, which is still an integral part of the Taos
experience.
Accepting the award for Rhoda Blake was her granddaughter, Adrianna Blake,
the third generation of Blakes to work at the Ski Valley.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is periodically presented to an individual who has had a lifetime of achievements in various aspects of winter sports, including competition, innovation, equipment design or other related endeavors. This year Otto Lang of Seattle was the recipient. Lang is best known as a producer and director of films, but he also taught skiing to the rich and famous and wrote one of the first ski columns.
Accepting the award for Otto Lang was John Naye, who will present it to him in Seattle.
This is the third year the award for Excellence in Media Relations was given, named in memory of Bob Gillen, a longtime NASJA press and corporate member. Barbara Thomke of Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Vermont was this year’s winner. Susan Graham Staples of Enosburg, Vermont, chairperson for the committee, presented the trophy to Barbara.
All of the above awards were presented at the annual banquet, March 27 at the Telluride Mountain Village. Nominees were presented a month earlier on the website and the entire membership had the opportunity to vote for their choice.
The Outstanding Competitor award was voted on by the NASJA members present at the annual membership meeting in Telluride. Nominations were those athletes who had distinguished themselves in competition during the just-completed season. It turned out to be an exciting vote.
Nominations were allowed from the floor and snowboarder Hannah Teter of Vermont was nominated. Her name appeared along with the four nominees already presented – Steve Omischl of Canada for freestyle aerials, Beckie Scott of Canada for cross-country skiing, Daron Rahlves and Bode Miller, both from the U.S. for alpine skiing.
After three ballots,
we still had a tie, and so this year’s trophies will be presented
to both Daron Rahlves and to Hannah Teter.
Rahlves, a native of Tahoe, is considered the best male speed skier in the
history of the U.S. Ski Team. He won the 2003 Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbuhel,
took a second and third in the 2004 Hahnenkamm and won the Kitzbuhel Super
G. He won the downhill at the World Cup Finals in Sestriere to finish second
overall in the discipline.
Hannah Teeter, a 17 year old snowboarder from Belmont, Vermont was voted Best Female Rookie Snowboarder of the Year in 2003 by Transworld Snowboarding magazine. Among Hannah’s major accomplishments this past season was a first in the Pipe and second in Slopestyle at the Breckenridge Vans Triple Crown; a third in Pipe at the Winter X Games; second in Pipe at the Aspen Grand Prix and finishing first at the Invitational Nixon Jibfest.
Her team placed first on MTV’s Three Way Threat in 2003 and, while barely old enough to drive, she won a Jeep at the U.S. Open of Snowboarding for being the best all around athlete of the contest in 2003.
In 2004, she has placed first in Pipe at the Grand Prix at Mammoth; the Grand Prix in Park City; the Winter X Games and the FIS Snowboard World Cup.
Trophies will be presented by members of NASJA to Rahlves and Teter at early 2004 winter events
