Brett Stepanik
And she’s off! Six-year-old Lucia makes a jump at Blackhawk Ski Club while her dad, Karl Hassrick, looks on.
Eleven-year-old Estella Hassrick stands at the top of the 15-meter ski jump waiting for the signal. But down at the 5-meter jump, Estella’s 6-year-old sister, Lucia, is getting restless.
“Can I go?” Lucia yells. “Wait, Lucia,” coach Nick Schott shouts back from a wooden platform halfway up the steep ski jumping hill. It’s a frigid Tuesday night in January and ski jump practice is underway at Blackhawk Ski Club.
Earlier in the evening Estella wiped out trying to land a 30-meter jump. After getting checked over, she is back at the 15-meter jump looking to regain her confidence. But her sister is impatient for her own turn. “Now can I go?” Lucia yells again. “Wait for your sister,” Schott shouts.
Estella stands still for a moment while she stares down at the jump in front of her and the landing, which seems a long way down the hill.
Blackhawk Ski Club in Middleton was founded by a group of ski jumpers in 1947 who purchased 30 acres of land west of Madison to build a ski jump. The members-only club now consists of 60 acres and includes downhill and cross country ski trails, five ski jumps, a biathlon facility and 5 miles of mountain bike trails.
Christine “Girly” Gessner has been coordinator of the ski jumping program for 13 years. Her father, Sig Malvik, was born in Norway, the birthplace of ski jumping. Malvik started jumping at age 3 and didn’t stop until he was 60. He built a ski jump on 40 acres of land he owned in central Wisconsin, where Gessner grew up and learned the sport. Gessner’s three sons, now in their late teens and early 20s, began ski jumping at Blackhawk when they were young boys and she took an active role in the program.
“I’m an outdoorsy person,” Gessner says. “When it’s winter and dark outside when you get home from work you could just sit inside, but I would rather head out to the hill.”
Before the club could begin jumping this evening, members first had to “pack” the snow — stomping it down while walking on their skis — to make it safe for landing. It’s all hands on deck, with parents and kids all packing.
One of the volunteer snow packers is Anna Hoffmann, a 17-year-old senior at Memorial High School who just returned home from the Olympic Trials in Park City, Utah. She will leave again in a week to compete in the Junior World Championships in Switzerland. Gessner looks at Hoffmann as she starts to make her way over to the hill. “Look at her — she’s low on vitamin D, she’s yawning, it’s finals week,” Gessner says. “But she’s here. These are your hills. You take care of them.”
Hoffmann says there is another reason she is here this evening — she wants the younger girls to have role models. “It’s so cool to see all the younger girls going off the jumps,” she says. “And it’s inspiring for them to have bigger kids [like me] here helping out.”
Although ski jumping was one of the eight sports included in the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924, women have only been allowed to compete since the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. “The Olympic Committee said ski jumping ‘would damage women’s reproductive systems,’” Gessner says.
“Even from a young age I wanted to be in the Olympics but it wasn’t a possibility,” Hoffmann says. But now that women are allowed to jump, Hoffmann has set her sights on the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
Hoffmann is there to offer the girls literal, not just emotional, support. When Lucia’s arms begin to tire out from her laps on the tow rope, Hoffmann gets behind the 6-year-old and helps move her up the hill to the 5-meter jump, where she waits for her older sister to make her next jump.
Higher up the hill, Estella finally gets into the in-run position and starts to slide down the ramp.
Everyone seems to hold their breath as she launches into the air. All is silent when she lands the jump, until her little sister lets out a “Woooooo!”
“Now can I go?”
Anna Hoffmann’s longest jump: 94 meters (308 feet) in Westby, Wisconsin.
One of the pioneers of women’s ski jumping: Karla Keck from Oconomowoc.
Why Lucia likes ski jumping: “I like that it’s a little fast. It feels like a speed bump.”
“K” point: Area the hill starts to flatten out, designating the size of the jump.
Record jump on Black-hawk’s 30-meter hill: 32 meters set in 2010 by Kevin Bickner from the Norge Ski Club in Fox River Grove, Illinois. Bickner will be representing the United States at the PyeongChang Olympic Games this month.
People involved in Blackhawk jumping program: 19, ranging from 5 to 50 years old.
Number who are girls: Eight, ranging in age from 5 to 17.
