By: Noor Haq (Correspondent)
Daniel Zagoren, a sophomore at SHS, has recently gone to Belgium to showcase his amazing skiing skills. However, it took him a lot of dedication and hard work to get to the position he is in now.
Zagoren says he started skiing at a young age and was influenced by his father. “My dad primarily got me into the sport. I was around five years old. We’d go to New Hampshire on the weekends, pretty much every weekend in the winter from December to March, maybe the beginning of April depending on when the snow melted” said Zagoren.
Zagoren started skiing in New Hampshire. “I like to ski at Attitash, which is in New Hampshire, and since then I just primarily Ski with my dad up until about 2nd or 3rd grade” said Zagoren.
Since a young age Daniel has been a competitive boy. After learning the basics, Daniel wanted more, he saw kids going through gates and courses and was intrigued, “I would see the older kids going down the hill going around Gates and through courses and stuff and I thought it looked interesting and I would always like to ski fast, my dad he’d always have trouble keeping up with me,” said Zagoren.
Zagoren gained an interest in racing only after trying the courses and gates. “I gained an interest by watching the kids go through the courses and I wanted to try it out. So I tried it out and I did my first race at the end of second grade and then the next season when I was in 3rd grade that was my first full season in ski racing, and from their it kind of just took off and since then I just love every second of it and it’s just been a really fun experience throughout my childhood,” said Zagoren.
After gaining an interest Zagoren worked hard to become an excellent skier. He had many major accomplishments that he earned from skiing. “I’d say one of the biggest accomplishments of the first major accomplishment that I achieved was by making the New Hampshire State team when I was 12 and from that when I was 14 I made the state team again and then I made the US Eastern Junior team,” said Zagoren. That is not all Zagoren accomplished he also made it to Nationals last April, and recently got accepted to a camp in Belgium.
Zagoren has recently come back and he enjoyed the trip. “I think it’s a pretty good trip and I think that I learned a lot from it too. I think it was nice to have a chance to ski this early in the season, because usually I don’t get the opportunity to until November or December and It was nice doing it in October I could get a head start on the season,” said Zagoren.
While skiing in Belgium he noticed many differences. Daniel says that skiing in Belgium is different yet is similar, he says that skiing close to home the slopes are much more icy, but in Belgium because it is an indoor facility they made their own snow artificially and it did take a little bit of getting used to.
Zagoren says that the trip impacted his skiing skills positively. “The trip definitely helped me improve a lot and the different coaches they gave me new things to work on that usually my typical coaches wouldn’t say. The coaches in Belgium went more in depth with the training and gave me new drills to work on that I wouldn’t have worked here. so going into the season I know what I need to work on instead of going into the season not knowing what I need to work on” said Zagoren.
Zagoren also says that watching the other kids ski also helped him with his own skills and showed him how to improve.
Zagoren loved the experience of being in a new country. It was cool, because I haven’t been there before. We never really went to the main cities in Belgium, such as Brussels, but it was mostly countryside and a lot of farms, it was very rural. There were a couple small towns close to us, that we sometimes went to, we never went to anyplace hugely populated and it was a cool experience and I got to meet a bunch of new people.
Daniel says he was nervous when he got there because he didn’t know what to expect, but as time went along he was happy that he went and he got to learn more about himself as a skier.
