U.S. alpine teams train together in Park City offseason camp

The U.S. men’s and women’s alpine skiing teams spent last week in Park City for their first combined offseason camp, using the USANA Center of Excellence powered by iFIT for testing, gym work and team-building. The week also took athletes off the snow for volleyball, hockey and hiking around town.

Michael Rheese, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s alpine athletic development manager, led the camp after about 10 months with the organization. Originally from Penola, Australia, Rheese said it was his first time running this kind of offseason camp, and he built it around more than ski-specific repetitions. The goal was to create a setting where athletes could push hard, look awkward if necessary and still get value from the work.

Park City gave the camp a ready-made high-performance base. U.S. Ski & Snowboard is headquartered at the Center of Excellence, an 85,000-square-foot facility on five acres that opened May 1, 2009. The building includes strength-training areas, a gymnasium, ski and snowboard ramps, trampolines, a nutrition center, recovery and rehabilitation space, multimedia rooms, an equipment workshop and a sports science lab. The organization says the center was designed to bring its 10 sports together as One Team, and it says it relies on private donations from individuals, corporations and foundations rather than direct government support.

That makes the camp part of a broader year-round pattern in Park City, not a one-off summer visit. U.S. Ski & Snowboard says the Center of Excellence stays busy in the offseason with athletes from multiple disciplines preparing for the coming season, keeping elite training traffic in town well beyond the winter calendar. For Summit County, that means the national team’s presence extends the sports economy into the shoulder months, when lodging, dining and other businesses depend on activity outside ski season.

The camp also carried a development message. U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced changes to its Alpine Development program on Feb. 27, 2025, shifting more emphasis to regional programming to better prepare athletes for World Cup success. The Park City camp fit that model by putting younger athletes in the same space as veterans and giving them a chance to see how national-team skiers train and carry themselves.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard has used the Center of Excellence for youth and development camps before, including an ELITEAM session that brought 32 young athletes to Park City. That history has helped make the city more than a resort backdrop. It is a place where the national team trains, develops and signals to the next generation that elite skiing in the United States still runs through Park City.