Holiday Valley Ski Patrol Golf Tournament Returns August 18, 2025
Holiday Valley Ski Patrol Golf Tournament Returns August 18, 2025
The sixth annual fundraiser tees off August 18, supporting Holiday Valley’s all-volunteer ski patrol with a fun day of golf, prizes, and community spirit.
Join the Holiday Valley Ski Patrol for some summertime fun at the sixth annual golf fundraiser taking place on Monday, August 18th at 12:00pm at Holiday Valley’s Double Black Diamond Golf Course. This year’s event is expected to be the most successful one yet. Proceeds benefit the Holiday Valley Ski Patrol for critical care necessities like First Aid supplies and rescue toboggans. EllicottvilleNOW caught up with two Holiday Valley ski patrollers, Anna Jaremko and Rebecca Mansell, who are co-chairs on the golf fundraiser planning committee.
“I have been a ski patroller with Holiday Valley for 17 years now, and my main role is that I am in charge of our First Aid training on the hill, so during the winter season, I’m the co-chair of our Membership Committee and I’m also part of the golf community,” explained Jaremko in a phone interview.
“I just finished my ninth year,” said Mansell, who goes by Becky. “Some of us are generational, like our parents were patrollers, too. My father was a patroller at Kissing Bridge for a bunch of years and I saw the camaraderie he had there with his friends; it was a lifelong friendship, and I thought I wanted to be part of that, so I signed up and tried out with Holiday Valley. I was accepted and did all the training, so he got to see me one year with my coat before he passed on. He was super, super proud,” the Hamburg native recalled.
Originally from Allegany, Jaremko, who now lives in Buffalo and commutes to Ellicottville on the weekends, concurs. “Something that is really amazing about the Holiday Valley Ski Patrol is that we’re very much a legacy patrol; we’ve become such a family that people absolutely want to join because their parents have joined, or their aunts, uncles; we have a lot of patrollers that are multi-generational,” she explained. “My father patrolled, and then I joined at 16 after watching him and wanting to do it myself. We have a lot of legacy patrollers, but we also have a lot of longevity as well. Our patrollers stay for a very long time; the national average for patrollers is 14 years, and at Holiday Valley, our average is more than double that at 29 years,” she said.
Jaremko explained what it takes to become a patroller. “If you want to join ski patrol, what we do is have everybody come out in March for a day and ski together. We get to see everybody’s skills and do interviews with our Membership Committee. From there, we develop a candidate class of people who are interested in joining,” she said. “The training starts in the fall, right after Labor Day, and they come down to Holiday Valley for our regional OEC class, which stands for outdoor emergency care – that’s our First Aid class – and they’ll be out there every Saturday for the whole day learning about different First Aid skills that they’ll need. This can be anything from splinting all the way up to CPR, AED - everything that you need to be a ski patroller and have that emergency care.”
“Once they finish with that training, which ends in mid-November, then we start our on-the-hill training, which is in the winters, one weeknight and all-day Sunday,” Jaremko continued, noting that training is run by the National Ski Patrol, a standardized program. “They learn how to do ski and snowboard skills and toboggan skills. So, you’re taking people who already have those skills and really fine tuning them for ski patrol specifically, and then you learn how to use a toboggan, which is one of our main ways to get people down the hill. You also work on those First Aid skills, taking them from the classroom and applying them in the snow. They’ll train until March, and then they’ll test out of the program and be ready to start on the hill where they are shadowing seasoned patrollers.”
“Essentially, we have two patrols,” Mansell said. “Daytime patrol is a paid patrol Monday through Friday from open until 4:30pm, and every evening and weekend, there are volunteer patrollers,” she said. Jaremko added that there are currently around 120 Holiday Valley Ski Patrollers.
Mansell shared that ski patrol does events year-round, including in the off-season. “There was a ski patrol team that participated in the Ride for Roswell all over the Western New York area. It was a cool mix of all these different patrols coming together and riding for Roswell,” she said.
As for the golf fundraiser, Mansell explained how it all started. “The golf tournament started out as a need that arose when COVID was happening and we didn’t have fundraisers like Fall Fest and some others,” she said. “It was the brainchild of another patroller and is a great summer event for us. Plus, it’s a fun event. It’s not a serious, contentious golf tournament. The rules of golf still fall into play, but people who are playing can buy Mulligans so they can hit a ball again if they don’t like what they hit,” she explained. “We have a hole-in-one contest; we have one golf green that is a bonus golf green from the course that we put bottles on… We get donations from the Winery of Ellicottville and other bottles and it’s literally put-put-drink. That is what we refer to it as. Golfers have to put their ball in a certain place and every single player who is participating in the tournament gets to hit a ball and whatever bottle it hits, they get.”
Mansell added that organizers expect 144 golfers, or 36 foursomes, to participate this year. The annual Holiday Valley Ski Patrol Golf Fundraiser takes place on Monday, August 18, 2025 at the resort’s Black Diamond Golf Course. Registration begins at 12:00pm with a shotgun start at 1:00pm. The after-party with food and drinks begins at 6:00pm and prizes will commence at 6:30pm. Registration packages are available, and foursomes are encouraged to sign up, although individuals and pairs will be accepted. A golf foursome is $600 and includes 18 holes, a golf cart rental, food, drinks, and prizes for the entire team. Sign sponsorships are available for $200 and include one company sign and logo on the website, in print material and in the brochure. Event sponsorship is $750 and includes the Sign Sponsorship package, golf for four, and more. Registration is available at HVSPgolf.com. For event related questions, email golf@holidayvalleyskipatrol.org or cal/text 716-598-6666.