Holiday Valley Freestyle Team Caps Off Standout Season
Holiday Valley Freestyle Team Caps Off Standout Season
The freestyle program wrapped another successful season marked by growth, milestones, and national-level achievements. From hosting its first-ever A Circuit event to sending athletes to Junior Nationals, the team continues to elevate its reputation while fostering talent, dedication, and community on the slopes.
Pictured: Holiday Valley Freestyle Team member Owen Przepiora
Although we were all sad to see the 2025-2026 ski season come to an end, this one marked a first for the Holiday Valley freestyle program which hosted its inaugural ‘A Circuit’ event earlier this year. With the end of the ski season officially behind us, EllicottvilleNOW caught up with Stan Pawlik, the longtime head coach of the Holiday Valley Freestyle Team, in a recent phone interview to get his take on the progression of the program and to recap some of this season’s highlights.
“The program has been around a long time,” said Coach Stan. “It’s kind of evolved since then, the whole freestyle part has changed. Back then, there were moguls, which still exist, and aerials that are still around, but there was also the sport of ballet, and that eventually went away. Then we started offering slopestyle, which became a big part of it, and that has grown to the point where there is a separate freeride team now from what we’re doing,” he said. “We basically concentrate on moguls and aerials, and we’ve got a wide variety of levels that we have within the team.”
Pawlik began coaching for Holiday Valley in 1990 and became the head coach in 1996. An international freestyle competitor himself, he trains five days a week with the team during the season. “We have all day Saturdays and Sundays, but we do offer throughout the week as well. We have a weeknight program that goes on that we offer to everyone on the team, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. A lot of the local kids will come out on Wednesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours from 5:30-7:30pm, and then on Fridays, for people traveling from out of town, we’ll have it later in night from 7:00-9:00pm,” he said. “We offer five days of training, which typically starts in the middle in December, just before Christmas, and will go till roughly the middle of March.”
Coach Stan went on to explain the differences between the A and B circuits, in which the B Circuit is comprised of entry level athletes competing in the Eastern Qualifier Series, and the more advanced A Circuit athletes compete in the Championship Series. “Once the kids get a little better and improve, they move on up to the Championship Series, or the A’s,” he explained.
“For the Bs, there is a lot of local events - [Holiday Valley] hosts an event, HoliMont has hosted one, the Buffalo Ski Club, Bristol, and Seven Springs; those are basically the ones that [the B Circuit] will do,” he said. “Once they move up, it’s a little more travel. Up until this year, we have had to travel more, and that’s actually one of our highlights is that we hosted our first A event ever, so we had kids from all over the east come here,” Pawlik shared.
The first Holiday Valley “A” Freestyle Extravaganza was held over the January 30th weekend and welcomed 48 regional competitors to take place in the mogul and dual mogul events. Competitors came from as far as New Hampshire, Waterville, Killington.
In addition to hosting its first-ever A freestyle event, several of the children from the program moved on to qualify for national events. “[The As] are competing against everyone throughout our Eastern Division, which then qualifies for national level events,” said Coach Stan. “Owen [Przepiora] going to Junior Nationals, that was one, but we also had him - along with Liam and Lilly Laraba - doing NorAm’s for aerials, which has become an international event, with athletes from Canada and the U.S. competing.” Samantha Neil also qualified for Junior Nationals, however only Przepiora traveled to the event, according to Pawlik.
“And then the Bs, for the Eastern Championship was a big event,” said Coach Stan. “The East is divided into three regions with championships for each region; we had 12 kids that qualified, and brother and sister Johanna and Everett Parmenter ended up finishing seventh for duals.”
As for Owen Przepiora, the 14-year-old from Chardon, Ohio, placed third overall in combined events at the Junior Nationals held at the Utah Olympic Park in Park City this past March. “He placed 3rd overall for combined events, took 8th in dual moguls, took 10th in moguls, and 5th in aerials,” said Owen’s father, Gregg Przepiora, in a recent phone interview. According to Gregg, Owen started skiing at the age of four with the Rangers program at Holiday Valley. His family took to skiing and started traveling to Ellicottville regularly on the weekends. The now freshman at Chardon High School entered the Holiday Valley freestyle program in 2021, making this past season his fifth. “He lives for it - it’s all he wants to do,” said Gregg of his son, who, despite a rigorous travel schedule, still manages to play on the freshman baseball team and maintain a 4.0 GPA. Mr. Przepiora also noted that his other two children are also in the freestyle program.
As for families thinking of joining, Przepiora said that the benefits have been wonderful for his family. “We have great friends in Rochester, we’ve got friends in Canada, and we’ve got friends all over the country now because of it. It’s been a great networking activity for the family and for the kids,” he shared.
Interested future freestyle competitors and their families can find out more about the Holiday Valley Freestyle Team by visiting its website, the Holiday Valley Freestyle Team Parent’s Association at www.hvftpa.com, or by reaching out to hvftpa@gmail.com.