Growing up in the California beachside paradise of Santa Cruz, Park Smalley did some surfing, but he had never skied. That was all about to change when he was a sophomore in high school.
"My dad came home one day, his family was from Washington, just outside of Sprague. He said, 'Your grandma's not doing very well, and we've got to move up there and take care of her," Smalley recalls.
"I said, 'When? This summer?'
"My dad said, 'No, this weekend.'
"We literally packed up the Buick station wagon with four kids and a 16-foot trailer. That weekend we were gone, and we moved to Spokane. Like most teens, I rebelled."
Smalley moved to Spokane in 1968 and enrolled at Mead High School — not far from a place called Mt. Spokane.
That was the historic winter of '68, when four feet of snow fell in January with negative temps most of the month. It was a little too much winter for the new kid from Cali.
"That was the first time I'd ever seen snow, it was crazy. All of a sudden I'm shoveling snow above my head down the walkway to the front door."
His new friends at Mead told him he should check out skiing. From his surfing, he felt he had the balance thing down. Halfway through that first winter, he went up to Mt. Spokane with his friends and was introduced to skiing.
The rest is history.
"I fell in love," Smalley says, "and by my second year I was teaching skiing."
The rest has been a whirlwind for Park Smalley, who has been called the "Father of Freestyle" and played a huge role in the sport's startup years. In 1984, he became the first coach of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team, and his athletes have won like crazy, along with landing on multiple Olympic podiums. In March, he's being inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.
"GIVE ME ONE YEAR"
Smalley's first big jump after high school started in a Spokane Falls Community College classroom.
"I didn't know what I was going to do," he recalls. "Like everybody, my folks said, 'You're going to school.' I remember sitting in that Psych 101 class thinking to myself, 'This isn't gonna work.' When I went home I said, 'Just give me one year.'"
So Smalley moved to Utah, where he taught skiing at Solitude and skied Alta.
In 1973, he visited Sun Valley to watch one of the first Hot Dog Skiing contests. He recalls that pivotal moment: "As I stood there with 10,000 people watching the event, I said, 'This has my name all over it.' And from that point on, I just kept chasing it around."
That one year turned into the rest of his life.
During the 1970s, he lived in Salt Lake, Sun Valley and Park City, following the freestyle circuit. During the summers, he spent his time working and training at Lake Tahoe at the World Freestyle Training Center, then launched into years of taking freestyle shows to South America and Europe. As part of that Marlboro Ski Show wowing crowds with their backflips and jumps, they even entertained the Shah of Iran.
"There were 400 or 500 people waiting there to greet the Marlboro ski team," Smalley recalls. "It was a crazy thing. We literally put together the show site and when we were all set up and ready to go, we heard the sound of a chopper come in and land nearby. Five guys got out, two in front with machine guns, the Shah in the middle and two guys behind him with guns. They watched the whole show, came up and congratulated us after, got back in the chopper, and hit the road."
SKIING OVER RAT LAKE
During these years, Smalley got a few jobs coaching at some weeklong freestyle ski camps around the country. One night while he and two other coaches, Rusty Taylor and Mike Williams, were having a few beers, Williams said, 'We've been doing these camps for other guys, why don't we do our own? I have a contact in Steamboat, let's give him a call."That eventually turned into the Great Western Freestyle Center in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where Smalley calls home to this day.
"I'll never forget one of my first students," Smalley recalls. "It was this 12- or 13-year-old kid with a big fuzzy head of hair and a mouth filled with braces. His mom says, 'Listen, we just moved to town. I've got to find something for my kid to do. Can you do anything with him?' I said, 'Absolutely, just drop him off and come back and pick him up at 3."
That kid turned out to be Fuzz Feddersen, a three-time Olympian and all-around legend.
Several of Fuzz's schoolmates came out to Smalley's program, like Cooper Schell, Maria Quintana and Nelson Carmichael.
"Park had somehow talked the city into letting him build a water ramp and outdoor trampoline area at the base of Howelsen Hill," Carmichael recalls. "We had sessions on the trampolines to learn new tricks, and then skied off the ramp into a small muddy pond we called Rat Lake. I didn't know it was the start of an entirely new era of my life."
This tight-knit crew from Steamboat made a huge impression on the sport of freestyle skiing, as athletes with tons of wins and as coaches. Schell went on to coach Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley.
FREESTYLE AT THE OLYMPICS
Smalley's success with his Great Western Freestyle Team was noticed by the U.S. Ski Team. He got a call asking if he would coach their U.S. Junior National Team in 1982. By 1984, he went on to become the first head coach of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team.Carmichael remembers being on that team. The small group of kids from Steamboat had grown into 30-plus men and women.
"Park became the true leader of freestyle skiing in our country and much of the world," Carmichael says. "He didn't have assistant coaches, team managers or travel coordinators. It was all Park, and we affectionately called him 'The General.'"
"I was really a mother, a father, a psychologist, a friend," Smalley says. "Being technical was probably on the bottom of that tower. But I was just lucky to be involved with so many talented people. It didn't take a whole lot to get the technique, but my job was to get them to be able to do it when we turn the lights on."
That light burned bright under his leadership, as Smalley's athletes won 114 World Cup Victories, 332 World Cup Podiums and seven Nation's Cups.
"When Park first saw me ski in 1987, I was a self-taught skier out of Killington, Vermont," recalls Olympic gold medalist Donna Weinbrecht. "With a sparkle in his eye and sense of humor, Park demanded discipline, which brought him the respect of the 30-plus freestyle athletes on the team."
In 1988 in Calgary, freestyle skiing was introduced into the Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport; his 1988 U.S. Freestyle Olympic Team won one gold medal and two silvers.
The U.S. Ski Association finally started realizing that freestyle was a legitimate sport and hired specialty coaches to help Smalley. It was about this time that he and his wife, Lisa, started having children. "Both of my kids were born, Lisa was at home, and I said, 'This is probably not the best for me to be gone all this time.' I kept coaching all through 1990, and stayed on as a consultant through '92.
"One of the guys from ESPN said, 'When you get done coaching, you ought to think about broadcasting,'" Smalley recalls. "I had never really thought about it, so they flew me out to San Francisco, I did a couple of trials, and the next thing you know I'm doing play-by-play commentary at the Albertville Olympics.
"It was pretty cool, Donna Weinbrecht took the gold and Nelson Carmichael the bronze. It was crazy — I'd be in the broadcasting booth, and there'd be a knock on the door, and it'd be one of the athletes asking for help. 'Hey, I'm just not figuring this thing out in this course. Can you give me a little bit of help with that?'" Park says with a laugh.
"A MASSIVE DEBT"
Smalley stepped back from broadcasting over 20 years ago and focused on life with his family and helping out here and there with the freestyle program he created. In 1999, Steamboat Resort showed their appreciation by dedicating an on-mountain freestyle venue as the Park Smalley Freestyle Complex.
Smalley's induction into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame is way overdue.
"When I was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004," Weinbrecht recalls, "I got a message from Park. All I could think of: 'Why isn't Park — the godfather of freestyle skiing — in there with me?' He was the one who had set up the foundation, the one who had organized and brought us all to the world stage: the Olympics. I continue to owe a massive debt to my friend and coach, Park Smalley." ♦
Bob Legasa has been a Snowlander contributor since 1994. He's also a Hayden-based independent videographer, TV producer and snowsports event promoter with his Freeride Media company. For more on the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, visit skihall.com.
