Warsaw Friends To Serve As Winter Olympics Volunteers
Posted
Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Randy Schmucker and Andy Anderson will serve as volunteers during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics in Canada.
Schmucker, 47, Warsaw, will serve as a gate judge in Whistler, Canada, Feb. 8-27. He will be a gate judge for the Winter Olympics men's downhill alpine skiing competition. He also will serve as a gate judge for the Para Olympics in Whistler, Canada, in March.
Schmucker will be assigned to two gates. His duties as a gate judge will be to make sure athletes who are competing in the Winter Olympics ski through the gates in the proper manner.
"A gate is a pole skiers ski around, and if they miss going through the gate or hook a ski on the outside of the gate they are disqualified," Schmucker said.
Schmucker applied to be a gate judge in 2006 and qualified to serve as a gate judge after serving as a level-one gate judge in Whistler, Canada, this year during the Whistler World Cups.
He served as a ski patroller at Cypress Mountain in Vancouver this year for the free-style skiing and snowboarding competitions for the World Cups.
Schmucker also was a ski patroller for Mount Wawasee, New Paris, in 1987.
Anderson, 48, Warsaw, will be a ski patroller for the free-style skiing and snowboarding events during the Winter Olympics Feb. 9-28. He will be stationed in West Vancouver at Cypress Mountain, a ski area on Grouse Mountain. He will care for injured skiers and monitor areas on the mountain that athletes and spectators walk up.
Anderson applied online in 2008 to be a ski patroller for the Olympics. He previously served as a ski patroller during the Whistler World Cups in 2008 at Cypress Mountain.
Schmucker and Anderson have been friends since the '90s when they were employees at Zimmer and bonded over their common interest of skiing.
They meet on weekends to volunteer at Bittersweet, a ski resort in Otsego, Mich., December through March. Schmucker is a hill leader at Bittersweet and is in charge of the resort's on-duty ski patrollers.
Schmucker said his favorite Winter Olympics event is downhill skiing.
"There is nothing like seeing someone fly by you at 80 miles an hour on skis," Schmucker said.
Schmucker's first experience with skiing was when he was 12 years old when he skied with his brother, Terry, on Boyne Highlands Ski Resort, north of Petoskey, Mich."My brother, Terry, took me up on one of the slopes, and I fell down, then stood up and got hit by a ski lift chair and fell down again," Schmucker said.
He said he was physically injured, and his pride was hurt, but that didn't stop him from skiing into his adult years.
Anderson has served as a ski patroller at Bittersweet since 2006, where he assists injured skiers and directs those who are lost on the slopes.
Anderson is excited about the Winter Olympics that he built an Inukshuk on his front lawn out of stones. An Inukshuk is a stone figure shaped in the image of a man that has guided travelers in the Arctic and Northern Canada for many countries to find a safe passage to food and shelter, explained Anderson.
Anderson's favorite Winter Olympics event is the half-pipe, especially when Sean White dominated last year in the World Cup event.
Anderson said he was 5 years old when he first skied with his brother, Marcus, on Steven's Pass in Washington.
Schmucker and Anderson went as chaperones to Colorado with Second Mile Adventures, Warsaw, in 2006.
Although Schmucker and Anderson said they have skied in different states, they both agree that nothing will compare to the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of volunteering at the Winter Olympics.
Schmucker and Anderson said this opportunity would not be possible without the support from their families.
For more information about volunteering for the Olympics, visit the National Ski Patrol Web site at nsp.org
