The story was buzzing along from skier to skier faster than a Tweet: a local kid had beaten the Olympian. He'd soared right past her, allrighty, and zoomed over the finish line, poles pumping as he carved to a hard stop.

This was a huge deal during Youthfest, an event at Pats Peak Ski Area with the immediate goal of bringing as many minority skiers as possible up to the New Hampshire mountain, teach them racing, give them some face-to-face time with an Olympian fresh off the Winter Games the week before, and hopefully, jazz them up on competitive ski racing.

The long-term goal here was more lofty: Help the National Brotherhood of Skiers (NBS) groom and create the first African-American Olympic Ski Team member-a goal the NBS has pursued for more than two decades.

And there it was. A teen boy beat an Olympian.

Or so the story goes. "Now, I wasn't there; I only heard about it," says Pats Peak director of mountain services Jim Wall, "and hey, I'm guessing it could be that the Olympian was bending over and adjusting her boots when this kid zoomed by, but, by God, I do believe that every kid there believed he beat an Olympian. And let me tell you: everyone was pumped up about it.

"What we wanted was to be able to visualize an African-American champion. Well, we didn't have to visualize: we just had to look up on the hill. The possibility became real."

It matters little that the "Olympian" was Julia Ford, a talented, up-and-coming member of the U.S. Development team, who lives in nearby Plymouth. Ford, second overall on the NorAm circuit last winter, might not be as big a name as Lindsey or Bode, but to the kids she was an Olympian through and through.

MAKING YOUTHFEST WORK

Youthfest also symbolized what has been another lofty, longterm goal: that of increasing diversity in the customer base at Pats. Youthfest is the latest incarnation of special events at Pats Peak, a smallish area that has all but set the Eastern standard on how to meld positive diversity events with good business practice.

Pats is no stranger to well-run diversity programs. Its Saturday night "POP" (Pay One Price) program is in its 10th year of partnering with Youth Enrichment Services (YES) of Boston. The aim is to craft affordable and innovative ways to bring inner-city minority youths not just to the mountain for an evening, but into the sport for a lifetime. And POP has had some hops. In its first year, POP's goal was to draw in about 300 or so skiers. Now, it logs in from 1,800 to 2,400 weekly. (Happily, the death-threat calls to the mountain's GM have long since ended.) Pats is making bank on POP, and YES is seeing more and more kids turned on-and even saved-by skiing and riding.

With that history, it makes some sense that the NBS decided to partner with Pats to further its Olympian goal. So, too, did Wall's idea to recruit the local NBS club, the Boston Ski Party, to help build Pats' program with YES.

When the Ski Party approached Pats about a racing program, Wall, always the businessman, was quick to seek a way to make it work financially. "We say, 'the more you can do for us in business, the more we can turn it around and do for you,'" he says. In a flat market, Wall notes, it simply has to be that way. "We said, 'Let's see if Pats can be the facilitator of this, and then in return, we'll look for NBS to create some events here.' This is absolutely a business investment."

Albeit a unique one. Pats makes diversity a way to build business (and has been wildly successful at just that), but it does it with a heart and a purpose: to meld the industry and minorities.

This has also been a case of serendipity. Look at the coincidences: A nice mountain for beginners in relatively close proximity to Boston is looking to increase its visitors. That same mountain happens to have a director of mountain services who was the victim of a near-death gay-bashing incident that meant a full year in rehab and motivated him to help remove discrimination anywhere he could. That director, and the entire mountain, happen to have a good relationship with YES, one of the most respected groups of its kind.

And YES, which represents the "have-nots" in the world, is more than willing to team up with the Ski Party, which represents the 'haves" in the African-American community.

The NBS is motivated, too. It wants to see some Olympic results.

And so, when NBS was looking for support, it found it much more easily than one might imagine. And in this success is a blueprint for other resorts.

Pats, in cooperation with YES and NBS, set up the three-day racing program for minority kids, offering coaching, camaraderie and racing. The area reached out to NBS groups across the region and brought in 50 racers, from as close as Boston and as far away as New York and Pennsylvania. NBS was responsible for selling the starting spots and helping promote the event, as well as bringing on sponsors to make it work, such as the sponsor that brought in Ford. Pats was responsible for all the "on hill" moving parts, such as coaching, training, timing of races and luncheons.


MAKING DIVERSITY WORK

As more and more minorities take up the sport at Pats, the area continues to see an increase in visits, and even in overnight stays. On any given Saturday night now, a whopping 75 percent of Pats guests are minorities. And, Wall says, while they may get introduced to the sport in affordable ways (such as the YES program) once they are hooked, they find ways to become spenders in this market.
And the message is bigger than that. While each kid left with a sense of history ("We can create an African American Olympic Ski Team member"), "It's not just about seeing an Olympian," Wall says. "It's about providing people a place truly without discrimination."

That's an under-appreciated aspect of winter resorts that Wall has seen first-hand. And it's not new. Wall recalls an incident from years ago, when he was working in the Pats rental shop. Back then, it was rare to see a minority person come through.

One day, a handful of inner-city minority boys did. From the get-go, Wall recognized the group dynamics he knew so well from growing up in Chicago. There was the leader, whose walk and attitude and the way the others submitted to him made it clear he was the tough guy. There were the kids willing to go along-even do the wrong thing-to be part of the group. Later, Wall walked outside and spotted them on the beginner trail. The leader was struggling the most, falling over. The weaker kid was taking it up faster. But the really cool thing, says Wall, is that "they were all laughing. I realized in that moment what we had here in our industry was a great equalizer. I knew we had to use it for that."

For YES, Youthfest was an extension of a racing program the group launched last year to expand on its program to bring inner-city kids into the skiing and riding world. "It's all about retention," says YES race program director Karen Schwinn-Clanton. (YES, it seems, has the same issue with retention as the ski industry.) "We catch the kids at first in grade school and get them out there to try skiing. That's huge, and gets them interested.

"But then they become teens, and then what? All of a sudden it's not so cool to be going on these family things. This [racing and programs like Youthfest] is about making it cool; making it where they want to be."

The benefits for YES and its constituents spread far beyond a mountain, she says. "You know, this could lead to scholarships. These are kids who are not usually going to be applying for scholarships for a collegiate Alpine ski team. If we can get them good enough, and wanting to do it, this could open opportunities that positively impact their entire lives."


MAKING AN IMPACT

In fact, Youthfest was wildly successful for everyone involved. Not surprisingly, plans are underway for this year. To expand the program, Wall is spreading the word and urging other resorts to join in. He'll tell you it's more business-savvy than anything else. "The number of ethnically-mixed kids 18 and under out there is incredible," he says. "To tap into them, well, it's just good business."

But there is a life-changing aspect to it as well. Consider this story. One day last winter, a YES staffer headed into an apartment in one of Boston's toughest neighborhoods to tutor a young boy. When the tutor walked into the apartment, he saw a child's drawing of a mountain. He recognized it immediately as a drawing of Pats Peak. "So he asked him, 'why did you draw that?'" Wall says. "And the boy answered right away. He said the assignment was to draw a place where he always felt safe. And he drew Pats. You know what? That means more to me than any future Olympian ever can. I mean: wow."