Rookie Academy Snowboard Instructor Courses

Any longtime readers of the site may remember the snowboard instructor training course I attended in Colorado this Winter. One of my classmates there recently told me that the owner, Dean, is looking for reviews of the course...

They won't be approaching me for a review as things ended badly and I was pretty much kicked out of the course. I want to take this moment to say that what happened at Rookie Academy was entirely my fault, and I don't hold being kicked out personally; at the time I was more than willing to leave. This review is not going to be nice, and I want to eliminate any personal bias right now.

Being kicked out of Rookie Academy was almost like a gift. There were things that happened outside of my own troubles that were just completely ignorant of good business practice. This illustrates the gist of it:

Classmate: Dean just sent me a message asking for a review and some good things about Rookie Academy.

Me: So are you going to write anything?

Classmate: Fuck no!

Classmate: They lied to me.

That's all they seemed to do. Lie. So where to begin? Well let's start with the cost of the program!

Cost

The website says that for an 18 week intensive course where you will get certified for level 1 or level 2 it costs you about 15k. Yup, fifteen-thousand-dollars! It's worth it too, at first. I mean you get to live in a mansion in Colorado for months and snowboard every day... a mansion that's got more than 10 people living it, and don't expect to have your own room.

Yes, if you want your own room in the house you will have to pay even more--a good thousand or so more. They got me for a shitty room in a walk-in closet, in other words I had to walk through someone else' room to take a piss. The doors creaked loud as fuck and I don't know how many times I slammed into the guy's shit trying to walk in darkness. It probably sucked as much for him as it did for me, getting woken up all the damn time.

I had a friend living in a "room" separated with those Japanese paper panels. There were no walls and the poor kid had to wake up and go to sleep on everyone else' schedule. He had to pay extra for this.

I'd have to say that with all of the extra crap that was NOT included in the cost from their website, the program was a good $5,000 more. Lie #1, and not exactly a "little white lie" either.

The website says you will have the option to work, which I took to mean that Rookie Academy had a deal with some ski schools in the area to keep a few positions open. Dean told me to expect to make around $3,000 working. There was no work though, and not because of the recession. Dean failed to mention that you had to find your own job, which any one who has worked a resort before knows is virtually impossible if you don't apply early on. Thanks Rookie Academy.

Training

Training was alright... when we had it. The whole thing was pretty hard to take seriously. We trained for two weeks in December than went off on a two break. So that's 16 weeks of training, not 18. Oh, wait! The last 5 weeks of the 18--err--16 week course are not for training, just accomodations. You can get training, but it'll cost you (surprise, surprise). So that's only 11 weeks of training? Hmm.

Now factor in the crazy training schedule. I never knew what group was practicing where, when. Sometimes we had Wednesdays off, other times we had Thursdays off, still other times we had Monday through Wednesday off but were practicing through Sunday... wait hold on, I'm confused.

Everyone passed their level 1 exams, but sorry to report that the level 1 exams are about as hard walking. Only two snowboarders managed to pass their level 2, and one of those two had his level 1 for a few years. Here's a good time to mention that the skiers had to take their level 2 after everyone had moved. The instructors and owner pretty much bailed, so no help for those poor bastards.

Another thing about training worth noting, on their website they tell you there is an optional freestyle intro course. I figured that would fill up the last 5 weeks of the course, but no. I asked about the intro course over and over and all I got was garbled sentence fragments in a New Zealand accent. Alas, there is no "freestyle intro course", they are fucking with you.

The Lift Pass Debacle

One thing I came to learn about Rookie Academy is that they absolutely love making money. They had a spare Epic Pass that some poor bastard purchased but was unable to attend the camp, and when one of the late arrivals to the school decided to buy a pass last minute they told him he could buy the extra for cheap.

Well the brilliant sleuths of Vail Resorts eventually noticed that "Bill Baxter" looked remarkably foreign and had a pretty thick Peruvian accent. A few questions revealed that my friend was not in fact "Bill Baxter", so Vail quickly shut down all passes purchased by Rookie Academy. For a little while they told us we were shit out of luck, bouncing us from referral to referral within Rookie Academy.

They finally sorted it out, but I'm sure they were trying their hardest to get everyone to forget about it. Either way, legit businesses don't knowingly commit federal crimes and jeapordize their customer's integrity like that.

Final Thoughts

The training at Rookie Academy was semi-useful. There are things I would have had trouble understanding without the visual aid, but I think there was a much better way to get the experience that I was looking for.

I'm going to point anyone who wants to become a snowboarding instructor to an alternative that I sure as shit wish I could have pursued:

Every thing Rookie Academy is going to teach you is verbatim from the literature found at the Rocky Mountain PSIA website. Buy all the books and videos, study them and go to SkiJob1 to apply for a job; you don't need to be certified to get a job at a ski/snowboard school!

For 15k, you can live at least 3 full snow seasons in Colorado. You can either get your own place or save even more cash by opting for employee housing. Start by working at a ski school and getting comfortable with how things work while practicing the techniques found at the PSIA website and literature during your time off. Your job will reinforce your practice and you will have the same experienced instructors to give you tips on passing your exam.

You can schedule your own clinics and exam dates through the PSIA website and before you know it you will be level 1 certified. This is the best way to do it, especially if you had the $15k ready to give to Rookie Academy. Save it and use it for an adventure while achieving the same results.

Sorry Rookie Academy, but you get two thumbs and two big toes down...