Home 9 U16 Selection Guidelines

Selection guidelines definitions: 

  • U14; Refers to athletes who are aged 12 and 13 as of December 31st
  • U16; Refers to athletes who are aged 14 and 15 as of December 31st
  • Alpine Ontario Alpin Athletic Committee (AOAAC); Refers to organization’s athletic committee and its representatives.
  • Alpine Canada Alpin (ACA); Refers to the National Sport Organization (NSO) of alpine skiing, ski cross and para-alpine in Canada.
  • Points; Alpine skiing is a sport based on time (as opposed to a sport like gymnastics for example) and thus can use all or any of following three methods in assigning points to athletes in order to rank and complete selections. It should be noted that AOA does not create these point systems themselves but rather are guided by its two governing bodies – FIS (International Federation) and ACA in which points to use when.
    • World Cup (WC) 500 Points; Refers to the series point system which can also be found on the FIS circuit, it awards points based on an athlete’s finish position. The full table can be found here
    • National Points; Refers to Alpine Canada’s national points system, ranks athletes based on their result(s) from a sanctioned national point race. A RESULT is a numerical representation of the racer’s performance, compared to the winner of a race. The points can be found on http://alpinepoints.ca/ .
    • Race Points; Refers to points awarded based on a result from a single sanctioned national point race.
  • Seeding; Refers to the order in which athletes start an event.
  • Tie Break; Refers to the process used to break a tie between two or more equally pointed athletes.
  • Event; Refers to a complete race.
  • Quota; Refers to the number of athletes permitted to start at a given race. This may be based on gender, team or event.
  • Run; Refers to a single run of an event.
  • Slalom (SL); Refers to the alpine skiing discipline.
  • Giant Slalom (GS); Refers to the alpine skiing discipline.
  • Super G (SG); Refers to the alpine skiing discipline.
  • Dual Slalom (Dual); Refers to the alpine skiing discipline.
  • Ski Cross (SX); Refers to the alpine skiing discipline.
  • Tier 1; Refers to athletes who qualify for Team Canada at Whistler Cup.
  • Tier 2; Refers to athletes who qualify for AOA’s Europe Project.
  • Tier 3; Refers to athletes who qualify for Eastern Final.

Selection Objectives
Alpine Ontario Alpin (AOA) creates athletic programming and pathways to ensure athletes are provided with the best possible environment to perform their best in high-performance opportunities. The U16 programs provide our top performing athletes with a platform to test themselves against the best in North America and beyond.  These early career-high performance opportunities establish critical benchmarks for athletes to continue to improve upon while inspiring and motivating them to strive for excellence in ski racing.

The objectives of the selection criteria are the following:

  1. Identify the strongest possible team for the event at this stage of their development
  2. Identify athletes at a young age that may need more work or more time to mature in order to be part of the team in future
  3. Capture those athletes most likely to podium
  4. Create a training group for pre-competition preparation
  5. Create a progression for athletes on the high-performance pathway
  6. Unify athletes to represent the province of Ontario
  7. Provide equal quota for males and females

Rules

For all relevant information for the U16 programming in Ontario please click here.  Included in these rules are course setting, training, competition rules and equipment details.  To be considered for any of the opportunities outlined below, a fitness test must be submitted to AOA admin@alpineontario.local no later than Dec 31, 2021.  Click here for the fitness testing protocol.

Appeals

The AOA Athlete committee will review all appeals which must be submitted in writing with appropriate and relevant substantiating data to the AOA Athletic Committee (via the AOA Competition Director, Robyn Skinner; rskinner@alpineontario.local ) based on dates stated per event outlined in this document. Appeals will be dealt with on a case by case basis, with injury and illness as well as extenuating circumstances being reasonable grounds for a review. Extenuating circumstances do not include appeals based on athletic performances.

The Athletic Committee will hold back 13% of the total Ontario quota per event, using a 50/50 split per gender to satisfy any substantial appeals.  The remaining spots will be reallocated at the discretion of the AOA Athletic Committee.

Tie Break Protocol:

Tie break for event selection will be dealt with on the following basis:

  1. The tie will be broken by best race point* acquired in relevant selection data.

*Race points cannot be applied to partial results (i.e. single run SL or GS)

Tie breaks for event seeding will be dealt with on the following basis:

  1. 1st tie break, next best-combined finish in the disputed discipline
  2. 2nd tie break, best run score in the disputed discipline
  3. 3rd tiebreak, second-best run score in the disputed discipline
  4. 4th tie break, name to be drawn from a hat at seeding meeting, the 1st name drawn is seeded ahead of the tied athlete in the disputed discipline.

**In the event that only one SG result is available, GS results will be utilized for tie break purposes

Dual Scoring 

The Dual will be scored in the following manner:

  • 1-8 are placed into knock out stages (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7 etc.)
  • winner advances to semi finals,
  • racers knocked out in round 1 are awarded 5th – 8th based on rank finish of combined qualifying runs,
  • semi finals (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3) winners move to ‘Big Finals’
  • semi finals losers to ‘Small Final’.
  • 1st – 4th are awarded based on results of Big and Small Final.
  • 9- 60 are awarded points based on qualifying runs.

EVENTS

U16 OCUP Finals
Dates: March 11-15, 2022
Location
: Southern Ontario Division, Collingwood, ON

Events:  SG-Osler; SL-Osler; SL-Alpine; GS-Georgian Peaks; GS- Craigleith/Safrata Cup

Quota: This event will be open with a maximum field size of 180 athletes.  If more than 180 athletes qualify for the event, a divisional quota process will be executed: SOD – 124, NOD – 16, LSDA – 14, NCD – 26= 180. Even numbers for gender split.

*All unused quota will be reassigned to the host division.

Seeding*: LSDA – 2, NCD – 3, NOD – 2, SOD – 8 per seed of 15

*Please see division appendices for divisional seeding procedures

OCUP FINALS TITLE: This will be awarded to the athletes with the total event points (using WC 500-point system) from the 2 SL , 2 GS and SG.

U16 Spring High Performance Opportunities

Tier 1: U16 National Championships, Mt. Tremblant, QC March 28-April 1, 2022

Tier 2: U16 Provincial Championships, Nakiska, AB April 7-10, 2022

** Please note that the event tiers have been created align the skill level of athletes from across Canada. Athletes are not able to turn down “Tier 1” for “Tier 2”. This will ensure that the largest number of Ontario athletes will have the opportunity to compete in spring high performance opportunities. The athletic committee will evaluate requests based on extenuating circumstances.

Selection for Spring Projects

U16 National Championships 

Dates: March 28-April 1, 2022

Location: Mt Tremblant, QC

Events: SG, GS, PSL, SL

Quota: Team Ontario will be allotted a quota of 28 spots (14M/14F).
Selections: Selection is based on results from the U16 OCUP Finals using the following data:

  1. Event winners will be automatically selected (max 5M/5F).
  2. Remaining spots will be allocated based on point calculation per World Cup (WC) 500-point system results for the best 3 of 5 events total.

Seeding: The U16 OCUP Finals series will be the primary information used for seeding at the U16 Nationals. Technical event seeding will be done using best GS, best SL. Speed seeding for the SG seeding will be based on the best SG results. All seeding data is from OCUP Finals (using WC 500 Pt system). Any ties will be broken by AOA tie break protocol.
Appeals: Appeals must be submitted in writing with appropriate and relevant substantiating data to the AOA Athletic Committee (via the AOA Competition Director) no later than march 15, 2022 at 5pm.
NOTE: All AOA registered athletes regardless of the program (i.e. USA academy) will be considered an Ontario athlete for the 2022 U16 National Championships.

U16 Alberta Provincial Championships

Dates:  April 7-10, 2022

Location: Nakiska, Alberta

Events: SG, GS, SL

Quota: Team Ontario will be allotted a quota of 40 spots (20M/20F)

Selections: Selection is based on results from the U16 OCUP Finals based on point calculation per World Cup (WC) 500-point system results for the best 3 of 5 events total.

Seeding: The U16 OCUP Finals series will be the primary information used for seeding at the U16 Eastern Finals. Technical event seeding will be done using best GS, best SL and SG.  All seeding data is from OCUP Finals (using WC 500 Pt system). Any ties will be broken by AOA tie break protocol.
Appeals: Appeals must be submitted in writing with appropriate and relevant substantiating data to the AOA Athletic Committee (via the AOA Competition Director) no later than March 15, 2022 at 5pm.