Thank you Heavenly ski patrollers for saving me

Dear Editor:

I have had a season pass at Heavenly Mountain Resort for more than 30 years. This year I managed to ski almost 90 days on “our” glorious mountain. My season ended on Tuesday, March 16. I am an intermediate-plus skier. I got hurt on the mountain after never being injured in my 55 years of skiing. I felt I could get down anything, not always gracefully, but safely.

I’ve always looked up to Heavenly Ski Patrol. I believed they were well trained, trustworthy and I admired their expertise, but never experienced it hands-on.

On that fateful Tuesday, three Heavenly Ski Patrollers showed me the real deal — Brian Shepard, Jeff Miller and Tristan Otto.

I was in the powder, 100 feet from the Gunbarrel run and fell. I couldn’t move my leg. I was cold, alone and scared.

I called ski patrol on my cell app and my call was answered immediately. I was reassured there was help on the way. I got several texts from them to keep me calm and reassured me they were searching.

They stabilized the sled on the steep incline, cut my pants off to check for bleeding and informed me of what they planned to do, so I felt a part of it and they said it was OK to scream bloody murder. In hindsight, I didn’t really need their permission, but they were being kind, no time to waste and thorough. I had a compound fracture in my femur.

They strapped me in, skied me down the moguls on Gunbarrel over to Roundabout and down World Cup where an ambulance was waiting. I thought I felt safe when I was put in the ambulance but that is very incorrect. In hindsight, I realized I felt safe and well cared for as soon as I met Brian, Jeff and Tristan. I can’t thank you three enough.

Becky Foust, South Lake Tahoe

STHS girls’ teams should be treated equal to boys’ teams

Dear Editor:

I am sending this to the community in hopes that individuals will put pressure on the administration to make changes so the next generation of female athletes does not experience the same inequalities that this graduating class has experienced.

My daughter is a senior this year. She has been the varsity goalie for the soccer team all four years of high school. Soccer helped shape her and taught her many lessons.

There is one lesson, however, I wish she didn’t learn. Sports played by girls, no matter how good the team is, are second to the boys.

There have been many times where the girls have had to change game times and fields to accommodate football. The girls do not practice on the high school field because football does.

The girls’ soccer team has gone to the state championship the past three years. The football team has not. I know football is very popular. I do not see, though, how popularity can take precedence over equality.

At the start of this year’s season, the girls soccer schedule showed a home game against Truckee at 2 p.m. Friday, April 2. This was set to be the “senior game.” The senior game has always been in the evening so families and classmates could attend.

The game was scheduled for 2 p.m. because that evening there was a football game. The football game was canceled. But, instead of the girls’ soccer team’s senior night being moved to that evening, a tentative football scrimmage was scheduled.

The statement this makes to the girls on the soccer team, after years of impressing upon them they have an equal opportunity to excel and participate in sports, in school, and in their future, is that they are second.

I know it may be too late to change the game schedule at this point. But I hope, in the future, female athletes at South Tahoe High School are treated with the equality Title IX afforded them in 1972.

Kathleen Brown, South Lake Tahoe

Editor’s note: The girls soccer game scheduled for April 2 at South Tahoe was changed to April 7 at Truckee. As of Thursday, the Vikings last home game is scheduled at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 31, against Truckee.