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Health & Fitness

RBR Senior Freestyle Skier to Compete in USSA Junior Nationals

Red Bank Regional (RBR) senior and Little Silver resident Ray Reynolds will be competing this month with the nation’s top young freestyle skiers at the U. S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) Junior Nationals in Park City, Utah. The USSA is the governing body of Olympic skiing and snowboarding that develops and supports athletes for U.S. Olympic teams.

Ray's specialty within freestyle skiing, men’s moguls, involves expert skiing technique down a steep course of moguls and executing aerial maneuvers off two jumps in mid-course.  The sport is scored on three criteria: speed, the ability to make perfectly executed turns straight down the mogul course and the difficulty level and execution of aerial "tricks".

While Ray has been skiing from a very early age, he has devoted much of his free time during his teenage years to honing his skiing skills by practicing and working during summers in the Olympic Training camp in Lake Placid and Whistler Mountain in British Columbia.  He has also devoted much of his winter weekends to competitions in the Northeast, which earned him this coveted opportunity. Amazingly, he has done this while maintaining an excellent academic record at RBR on the honor roll and as a Piano Major in the school’s Academy of Visual & Performing Arts, which involves many concerts and performances.

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He is ecstatic about this opportunity in what is known in freestyle ski circles as the “Junior Olympics” stating, “I am so happy that my long days of practice on the slopes have paid off and I am really looking forward to competing in Park City.”

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