The world was watching when Mount Snow athlete Devin Logan captured the silver medal in the first-ever Olympic ski slopestyle event in February in front of 21.4 million TV viewers.

Following the Games, Logan made coast-to-coast appearances on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and “ET Weekly.” Then she headed back to Mount Snow, where she grew up skiing, for a hometown parade and celebration. She left with the key to the valley in her pocket.

Across the country, resorts have long supported junior competitive programs, from ski racing and snowboarding to park, pipe and moguls. The resources that go into hosting these programs are considerable. There’s snowmaking, bundles of breakaway gates and brushes, coaches, hill space. Runs need grooming, mogul courses need seeding, and jumps need building. Not to mention the administration side of things.

Fostering young athletes is, without a doubt, a commitment for resorts. And depending on a range of factors, those mountains either lose money, make money, or break even. But resorts recognize the payback is not always financial. By association, Mount Snow shared the limelight with Logan.

The question: Is the return on investment, long term and short, in dollars and in exposure, worth the effort?

WEIGHING COSTS, BENEFITS
Mount Snow operates the Mount Snow Training Center, which attracts 450 kids a year across disciplines at the development and competitive level. “It makes sense from a business standpoint,” says communications manager David Meeker. “We don’t lose money.”

Clearly, Mount Snow has benefitted from the Olympic buzz. “The impact of having one of our sponsored athletes win an Olympic medal on the world’s biggest stages is tremendous,” says Meeker. “We never set out to breed Olympians.” But breed it has. Olympians Kelly Clark, Nick Goepper, and Eliza Outtrim have all trained at Mount Snow.

Junior programs have the potential to instill a passion for snowsports and create lifelong enthusiasts. Mount Snow has already seen that potential realized. The kids who grew up in Mount Snow’s race program in the 1990s are now returning with families of their own. And they’re putting their kids in the same junior programs.

Mount Snow is also home to Carinthia, a 100-acre terrain park where Logan cut her teeth. “The dividends are a long way out, but the investment builds loyalty, brand recognition, and furthers the sport,” says Elia Hamilton, director of freestyle terrain for Peak Resorts. Hamilton has been around long enough to see those long-term benefits pay off—he sculpted the features Logan trained on 10 years ago—but he also sees short-term benefits in devoting resources to junior programs, including the terrain park. “Carinthia attracts great skiers and riders, which inspires the average guest,” says Hamilton. “It gives us street cred. Mount Snow is the place to be.”

Resorts admit there are downsides. In the short term, racing families aren’t always big spenders. “They’re the ones mixing saltines and ketchup with hot water in the lodge to make soup,” says Hamilton. And destination guests often complain about runs being closed off for racing.

But eventually, research shows, those tomato soup eaters will spend money in snowsports. According to studies conducted by SnowSports Industries America (SIA), kids who start skiing and riding by age 10 will spend an average of $73,000 over their lifetimes. Meanwhile, participants who take up the sport at 25 and up will spend only $20,000 before they retire. Hooking ’em young pays off.

WINNING, SHORT TERM
Nashoba, just 25 miles outside Boston, is a case in point. Despite its diminutive 240 vertical feet, the area has a vibrant junior competitive scene. On any given night of the week, up to nine lanes are set up for gate training. In addition to the junior competitive racers lapping courses under the lights, the area hosts 22 different school race leagues, as well as masters racers. Nashoba pours considerable resources into the junior programs. Its coaching staff alone is 50 deep.

For Nashoba, it’s a lucrative setup. “All those teams pay for lane space,” says marketing and corporate sales director and former Olympian Pam Fletcher, whose family owns the resort. Almost every other weekend, the resort hosts a ski race, slopestyle, or big air event. Even Buddy Werner, a feeder program, attracts 350 kids for a race.

Nashoba also sees the marketing value of supporting junior programs. Given her U.S. Ski Team pedigree, Fletcher is tapped for interviews every four years by the likes of NBC. “They always ask about Nashoba,” she says. “You can’t buy that kind of coverage.”

At resorts that can’t rely on droves of night racers streaming in from major urban centers, the formula for success needs to be different. Copper Mountain, for one, has focused on making hay in the early season, typically a slow time for a ski resort. “Our northern aspect, elevation, and base-area accessibility are the perfect recipe for early-season training,” says Pete Woods, Copper’s VP of mountain sports. Copper has poured huge resources into facilities, including miles of B netting, A-net towers, and Willy bags, to host the U.S. Ski Team at Copper’s U.S. Ski Team Speed Center, the only early-season full-length downhill training venue in the world. The resort is also perennially the first in the nation to open its 22-foot-high Super Pipe, which attracts junior competitive snowboarders.

Also open in the shoulder season is Woodward at Copper, the 19,400-square-foot indoor training facility that recently got a $500,000 facelift. “Woodward is going nuts early season with all the development teams,” says Woods.

By pouring resources into these venues in October and November, Copper attracts teams from around the world. This past season more than 150 teams trained at Copper, the vast majority of which comprised kids and development teams. The result: November is a revenue-generating month for the resort, thanks to fees for lane space, lift tickets, lodging, retail, and restaurants.

The biggest challenge is achieving a balance between the public and the competitions. “That’s always a bit of a dance,” says Woods. “We try to inform guests that it’s a positive: we tell them these are the future racers of America.”

WINNING, LONG TERM
Supporting young athletes is a major touchstone at California’s Sierra-at-Tahoe, which has seven terrain parks and what it calls “low-pressure, high-support style” junior programs across the various disciplines. The resort hosts Buddy Werner racing, competitive ski racing, and freeride and snowboard programs. Additionally, five local high schools train at the mountain.

Sierra’s formula has produced such athletes as two-time Olympic medalist Hannah Teter, snowboarder Jamie Anderson, who won gold in slopestyle in Sochi, and Maddie Bowman, gold medalist in the inaugural halfpipe ski event at the 2014 Games.

When Booth Creek acquired Sierra in 1996, general manager John Rice took a cue from the resort’s new owner. “I asked [George Gillett] how he felt about spending some of the company’s resources to support young athletes. He said, ‘If we don’t do it, who will? We have a responsibility to do it.’ ”

That top-down belief system for supporting young athletes has endured at the resort. The head of grooming grew up racing at Sierra. The head of lift operations was on the snowboard team. And Maddie Bowman’s parents work on race crew.

“The whole mountain is passionate about these future athletes,” says Christina Griffith, Sierra’s competition services manager.

“Is the program a money maker? No,” she says. But Sierra takes the long view. Sierra has supported Bowman, for one, for 18 years. Since winning gold in Sochi, she’s been on “Ellen” and “Jimmy Fallon.” While being interviewed by NBC last February, Bowman told the world, “Sierra-at-Tahoe was my daycare. My parents dropped me off, and I snowboarded all day with the team.” Recall that some 21.4 million viewers were tuned in.

THE INDEPENDENT MODEL
Resorts like Vail, which reports growing interest in junior ski racing, play host to junior competitive programs without actually dedicating significant resources to them. The Ski and Snowboard Club of Vail (SSCV) is a separate nonprofit race club that operates independently on the mountain. The club raises its own funds, manages the program, and makes any needed investments. In fact, the club raised $2.7 million to upgrade snowmaking at Vail’s Golden Peak in 2009 to ensure early-season coverage for training.

The model at Vail is not without a certain friction. “The downside is that we don’t have complete control, and to a certain extent, the club competes with our own ski school business,” admits Chris Jarnot, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Vail.

“Still, the partnership works. The ski club is prospering and developing world class athletes, through whom a certain amount of exposure is generated for Vail.” Not so long ago, Mikaela Shiffrin was a pee-wee racer at Vail, and her connection with Vail certainly brings considerable media attention to the resort.

As far as races are concerned, Vail charges the ski club to host an event, but otherwise SSCV runs the show. “When you factor in all the fully-loaded expenses, we might be breaking even when we partner with the club to host a race,” says Jarnot.

Despite the economics, Vail does support the club. “We consider it an investment in a program that will generate exposure for our sport internationally when athletes succeed at the World Cup and Olympic level,” he adds.

LOSS LEADER
In Indiana, the junior ski racing program at Perfect North Slopes is a loss leader, with only 50 or so committed kids. “It’s getting harder to justify it,” says Chip Perfect, Perfect North’s president and GM, who also points to the additional risk of a catastrophic injury either in the racecourse or in the park. “At our biggest race of the year, we had two runs cordoned off, and only 40 kids racing,” he says.

Despite reservations, Perfect continues to support junior ski racing. “Those kids are passionate about it. You can’t take it away from them.”

And occasionally it does pay off in a big way. Especially when one of your athletes ends up winning a medal at the Winter Olympics. Nick Goepper, who took home bronze in the slopestyle event at Sochi, started skiing at Perfect North when he was five. Goepper skied 12-hour days lapping the resort’s 400 vertical feet. (At 15, he signed on as a sponsored athlete at Mount Snow).

Indiana skiing, and Perfect North, reaped a ton of exposure. “We’ve been completely shocked at the degree of enthusiasm from the community and the media,” says Perfect. “It’s off the charts valuable. It makes it all worthwhile.”