Amid the 1,100 young athletes who descended on Terrace to compete in 18 different sports at the 2010 B.C. Winter Games last Thursday through Sunday (March 4 to 7), Whistler and Pemberton competitors managed to stand out.

Along with 11 podium finishes for Whistler Mountain Ski Club (WMSC) K1 racers, Whistler’s Alex Gershon and Pemberton’s Brenden Kelly kicked in two medals to the total for the Vancouver-Squamish zone. The region’s athletes collectively finished third by earning 77 medals behind the first-place Fraser Valley athletes, with 103 podium finishes, and the runner-up Thompson-Okanagan group with 86 medals.

Kelly, 14, scored a silver medal in his dual moguls event. With his confidence rising throughout his skilful runs and difficult tricks, he was able to end the day on the second step of the podium.

“It was really a surprise,” Kelly said of his medal-winning finish. As he kept beating competitors in his head-to-head dual moguls rounds, he said, “My confidence level kept going up and up and up,” resulting in the silver.

Kelly also turned in a solid sixth-place finish in his single moguls event. He stepped up his skills when it came time to deliver, but so did the rest of the competition.

“On my single moguls, I pulled it together. I did a lot better than I normally do,” Kelly reflected. He also finished 12th in his slopestyle event.

Gershon, a WMSC alpine ski racer, finished atop the standings in Sunday’s men’s K1 slalom event, followed by WMSC teammate Riley Seger in second place. Seger also won two more medals, striking gold in Saturday’s slalom race and silver in Friday’s giant slalom event, while Gershon finished fifth in Friday’s race.

In a statement from the B.C. Games News Service, Gershon said he felt it was “awesome to win a gold,” but he also found that it was “fun meeting other skiers from different places and hanging out.”

WMSC skiers opened the racing on Friday by sweeping the podium in the women’s giant slalom event — courtesy of winner Mikayla Martin, silver medallist Siobhan Finan and bronze medallist Stefanie Fleckenstein — while Seger won his first silver medal and the WMSC’s Cameron Alexander claimed bronze in the men’s giant slalom.

On Saturday, Fleckenstein claimed another bronze in the women’s slalom, with Martin fourth, while Seger won his gold and Alexander claimed a silver medal. Wrapping up with slalom races on Sunday, Martin and Gershon sped away with the gold medals.

Whistler’s Cheyenne Ling chipped in solid results with her seventh- and 12th-place results in the women’s slalom races.

Whistler’s Max Peiffer earned two top-10 finishes in his alpine events by finishing seventh in Friday’s giant slalom and sixth in Sunday’s slalom, and Jonathan Hutchison added another top-10 ski result by finishing 10th in the giant slalom. He also finished 27th in a slalom event, while Hugo Ng finished 23rd and 39th in his slalom races.

In the freestyle competitions, Whistler’s Sarah Lawson posted finishes of fourth, fifth and sixth place in her single moguls, slopestyle and dual moguls events, respectively, while Taylor Wilson earned a fourth-place finish in his slopestyle contest and finished 16th in his dual moguls event and 19th in his moguls competition.

Their Whistler Blackcomb Freestyle Ski Club teammate Jake McGregor won a silver medal for the Vancouver-Squamish zone in his moguls event, and added fifth- and 10th-place finishes in his dual moguls and slopestyle competitions.

In the Nordic racing, Whistler’s Lauren Doak and Jenya Nordin sped to solid finishes of 10th and 12th place, respectively, in the classic technique women’s Midget race.

Whistler’s Emina Ida hit the ice with the Greater Vancouver hockey team, which romped through high-scoring early games but lost a close bronze-medal match to the Kootenays squad.

Overall, Kelly said, his B.C. Winter Games experience was a lot of fun, as he took his first plane trip for a ski event and interacted with the hundreds of kids competing in the different sports, as the young athletes stayed together in school classrooms and were entertained with a dance and demonstration by a hypnotist in between events.

Kelly also said he reached a new level in his B.C. Games events, as he found that with his speed and confidence improving, he “just kind of clicked one day” and fully used the proper techniques in his skiing. The young athlete said it felt great, and he hopes to keep it up.

“I skied better there, so I’m going to keep training hard,” he said.

Whistler’s James O’Neill served as the head coach of the alpine ski team for the Vancouver-Squamish zone, and Pemberton’s Christine Kohls led the Fraser River Delta ski team. Whistler’s Nicholas Bazin and Sarah Hogg coached the Vancouver-Squamish zone freestyle team, and Maria Lundgren of the Whistler Nordics led the zone’s cross-country ski squad.

The B.C. Games are designed to offer opportunities for athletes, coaches and officials to develop and prepare to reach even higher levels of competition in similar multi-sport events, while promoting participation in sports and communities.

“These Games are really raising the bar for competition, and we see every year that the competition gets better and better. We saw the success of the 2010 Olympic Games and we saw how many former B.C. Games athletes were participating as part of Team B.C.,” Kelly Mann, president and CEO of the B.C. Games Society, said in a statement.

“I can’t help but hope that in several years from now, we will see a lot of these kids on podiums at Olympic competitions.”