Black ski club hits milestone
In its 20th year, group hopes to draw more people to winter sports
Omoye Cooper clearly remembers how she and others reacted when a friend suggested they all go skiing at Jiminy Peak, where he was a weekend instructor.
“We were like, ‘Get out of here. Black people don’t ski. We aren’t going up on some mountain,’” she said.
But her friend was persistent. “He finally got some people to bite,” Cooper said.
That was around the year 2000 and this year, the Capital Region’s Nubian Empire Ski Club is celebrating its 20th anniversary as the area’s Black winter sports club.
The club, which Cooper helped found, has since adopted a phrase — “Who says we don’t?” — that they put on their banner, remarked Peggie Allen of Troy, another club founder and its first president.
The Nubians are among dozens of Black ski clubs nationwide.
Like everyone in the winter sports industry, they are hoping for a pandemic-free season next year. And like the resorts they patronize, they are looking to bring more Black skiers and snowboarders into the fold.
For the ski industry, it’s an
imperative. As the United States has grown more diverse, the number of Black, Hispanic and other nonwhite skiers and snowboarders hasn’t kept up.
“Our country’s population is diversifying — but skiing, according to the data, is not keeping up at the same pace. That says that our industry clearly has work to do to make skiing and riding more inclusive and welcoming to all,” said Adrienne Saia Isaac, director of marketing and communications at the National Ski Areas Association.
During the 2019-20 season, Black visitors comprised just under 2 percent of all snow sports visits, with white visitors comprising more than 87 percent, according to the association.
The Snowsports Industries Association, another trade group that includes equipment and apparel makers, uses a slightly different measurement but still found Black skiers making up less than 7 percent of skiers last year.
Reaching new markets is even more important when one considers that the skiing and riding booms of decades past, starting in the 1960s, have plateaued as baby boomers age out of the sport and youngsters are courted by other industries such as video game makers, dirt bike sellers or theme parks, all competing for their time and money.
“We want to see those numbers move in a positive direction,” said Adam White, communications director for the Vermont Ski Areas Association.
Eager to tap the Black consumer
market, White said his group — along with several Vermont resort owners — convened a meeting three years ago at the Bromley resort with Nubian Empire members.
They wanted to know how to draw more Black and other nonwhite skiers.
White recalls that club members like Allen said it was the first time resort operators had frank discussions of race with the group.
One of the first steps was a broadened ad campaign featuring diverse faces.
Some of the Vermont-area resorts have also gone to major cities like Boston to recruit Black employees.
Black skiers have been organized since at least 1973, with the creation of the Chicago-based National Brotherhood of Skiers, an umbrella group of local clubs across the U.S. as well as the United Kingdom and Caribbean. (Allen is also a past president of that group).
Back in the ’70s, Black skiers were even more of a rarity on the slopes, and not everyone knew
how to react.
There’s an oft-told story about how the Brotherhood held its first national summit, or weeklong gathering of clubs, in Aspen in 1973. Worried about the Black Power movement of the times, authorities put National Guard troops on alert.
As it turned out, the National Brotherhood summits, which attract thousands skiers, became known mostly for their lively outdoor parties, parades and the distinctive colorful uniforms, or matching ski jackets that the various clubs sport on the slopes.
The Nubians have purple and gold jackets.
That’s not to say there still aren’t some startled looks.
“For the most part they are actually a little surprised at first glance,” Henri Rivers, the NBS’ current president, said of how the general public reacts when they see the mass gatherings.
“But once they come down and start mingling with us, they are very warm and friendly,” added Rivers, a Long Islander who is also a racing coach at Windham Mountain.
Moreover, he said, ski resorts and ski towns quickly realized that hosting groups like that is very good for business.
“The impact that we bring to their communities, the financial impact, that is critical,” he said.
“Resorts are very welcoming of us because we make a huge economic impact when we come to a resort,” Allen added.
Cost is a constant concern when it comes to skiing, which isn’t cheap. In addition to lift tickets, there is the equipment and expense of getting to a ski or snowboard area and, if it’s distant, of lodging.
Cooper admits that the slopes are open mostly to those who have money.
The Nubians have a youth development program in which they help with the cost for youngsters to come skiing. With the help of cooperative ski resorts, like West Mountain in Glens Falls, they’ve brought newcomers into the sport.
That’s one of main goals of the National Brotherhood, added Rivers, who explained that the group helps sponsor Black skiers and riders aspiring to international and Olympic-caliber competition.
They currently have a dozen racers and snowboarders under their wing. One competitor from Michigan, Brian Rice II, or Flyinbrian as he is known, may be the nation’s first Black snowboarding Olympic team member.
Having a Black Olympian would do a lot for snow sports visibility, similar to how Arthur Ashe in the 1960s paved the way for Black tennis players, or how Bubba Wallace is breaking barriers in NASCAR auto racing.
In the meantime, skiers like Cooper, Allen and Rivers will keep waxing their skis, and as spring sets in, start looking forward to a COVID -free 2021-22 winter.
Twenty years on, Cooper still remembers her first days on the slopes before she went on to co-found the Nubian Empire club.
“I went in the spring. I didn’t do well,” she recalled, explaining how other beginners seemed to be progressing faster.
“They left me after lunch and went on the chairlift. I was still on the bunny hill. I kept falling.”
Determined, she came back for a second day and promptly crashed into another skier on the beginner hill.
After apologizing, the other skier solved her problem, telling Cooper she was looking at her rather than down the hill.
“Wherever you look that’s where you’re going to go,” Cooper was told. Things clicked after that.
“By my second time out, I was hooked,” Cooper said. She’s been skiing ever since, and has gotten her six grandkids into the sport as well.