July 04, 2018 – Cross Country Ski Ontario (XCSO) is committed to providing programming to enhance skier development and incentives to encourage our skiers to seek every opportunity to ski as fast as they can. Please review the notice below regarding changes to the Ontario Team structure for 2018-2019.

Notice: Ontario Team Structure for 2018/2019
Our objective is to both retain as many skiers as possible across all age categories and to grow Ontario’s representation across all programs at the National level.In order to achieve this objective, XCSO offers high performance training opportunities to selected Ontario skiers from Midget through to U23 and University skiers.

This programming is intended to both identify and develop talented Ontario athletes, and provide a development path to assist their athletic development. These opportunities are offered in partnership with NTDC Thunder Bay to ensure alignment in our programming and to offer the opportunity for both skiers and coaches to learn about each other.The Ontario High Performance Committee (HPC) reviewed the current ‘state of affairs’ with respect to our performance on the National stage, our development of athletes and whether changes made 5 years ago are having the desired outcome.

It was determined that a re-tooling of the ON Team structure is necessary in order to achieve our objective. A major shift will be to ‘cast the net wider’ and involve more ON racers in age appropriate developmental opportunities. Another major shift will be to use CPL rather than Ontario points for team selection with the continued emphasis on Ontario Cups for our Juvenile and Junior B/G categories. A review of team fees and cost sharing trip subsidies is also included in this process.