March 18, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Shawnee Peak starts ski patrol young

by Heather Burke/

Shawnee Peak's student patrol program teaches high school students real life-saving first aid. (photo: Doug Wall/Shawnee Peak)

Shawnee Peak's student patrol program teaches high school students real life-saving first aid. (photo: Doug Wall/Shawnee Peak)

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It’s a cold Tuesday night at western Maine’s Shawnee Peak, and Alissa Leonard is snowboarding and earning credits while her fellow Oxford Hills High School students are studying and posting on Facebook. Leonard has earned her red jacket as a student ski patrol, now in her third year of learning outdoor emergency care and patroller first aid.

Leonard is a Maine high school senior. She joined Shawnee Peak’s patrol at age 15 as the first female snowboarder student.

“Becoming a patrol has taught me so much about real life work. This is adult responsibility caring for people in critical situations,” she said. “I have always enjoyed helping people, and this is a great way to do that.”

Doug Wall started the Shawnee Peak Student Patrol back in 2006.

“I am a former teacher, so I had the contacts at schools to reach out to the kids, and I had a lesson plan to make this into a reality. I was even able to get the students high school credit because this is a real curriculum," said the 20-year patrol veteran at the Bridgton mountain.

Shawnee’s patrol students undergo 140 hours of training, including first aid courses in the fall followed by on-snow training every Tuesday night and all day Saturday throughout the ski season. They learn Outdoor Emergency Care (OEC) along with CPR, then prepare for an OEC certification exam where they are tested on their emergency and toboggan skills, competing with other patrol from Virginia to Maine. This year’s certification course is at Vermont's Bolton Valley.

Wall said that the retention rate for young people at traditional ski patrol training was poor because the kids didn’t have peers to relate to.

"Here, the kids have each other and we work with their school schedule," Wall said. "They work very hard balancing their studies, homework and their time training on the mountain. The majority come back after their first year and the program has really taken off. We now have 21 student patrollers."

Jeff Huston, a five-year patroller at Shawnee Peak, said: “This student program is fantastic. It brings kids from all over the region and teaches them people skills, leadership and first aid at such an early age. This is not Band-Aid application stuff, these kids go through the same medical program as senior patrol and learn serious assessment of critical injuries and first aid skills. They will make excellent patrol because they will have so much experience."

So, if you are skiing at Shawnee Peak and a young patroller arrives on an accident scene, know that you are in good hands. Although, Wall assured: “The student patrol are always accompanied on the scene by senior patrol. People might be concerned if a 16- or 17-year-old arrived solo. But these students participate in aiding. They don’t just shadow, they are trained and competent to provide first aid.”

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