Save a skier, ride a rail

One year ago this month, Jib Club appeared on CatsConnect with a bio of “Come learn to jib and build stoke with shredders on campus. Advisor must be able or willing to try and slide PVC ski rails.”

The idea of Jib Club began to form in 2021 when environmental science major Bode Kostick and business student Nate Moody saw the first-ever MSU Rail Jam. “I remember Nate and I originally watched Rail Jam our freshman year and we were like, that's kinda lame. We could do way better than that,” Kostick said. “It was a super sick idea and everyone there was super stoked, but half the features were unhittable because you couldn’t get enough speed and we thought we could fix that,” he said. 

Moody and Kostick decided to invest in their own style of urban skiing and make do with what they could find on campus. The first feature that the two put together was a couple of parking signs found abandoned behind the Bobcat Stadium that were later confiscated by the police. Another early feature, a bunch of PVC pipes, was donated by Andrew Walsh who was also a freshman at the time. 

“I met Bode in the quads one day and sorta started jibbin’ seriously,” Walsh said. 

“Then also we would go to these rail sessions and it would be this is really cool but we weren’t good enough to throw anything. So we’d just be intimidated the whole time, which is a common theme, so we wanted to make something where all people can learn to ski in a judgment free environment,” Kostick said. 

Thus, Jib Club as we now know it came to be. 

Jib Club has now grown to include over 150 MSU skiers and boarders who do clinics and events, make video edits and helped design the MSU Rail Jam course this past year. One such event was the Women’s Rail Clinic held on Feb. 10, taught by nursing student Elyse Byrd. 

“I was eight when I first started skiing, none of my family [were] skiers. But I went up skiing with my family, and we had a ton of fun, so they were like, let’s do this. So we tried it and we hated it. My brother who’s a really good park skier now was crying the whole way down the hill,” Byrd said. 

A serious jibber now, Byrd took second place at Rail Jam this past year. Her women’s clinic was also a resounding success. “It was super fun, I was glad so many people came out. There were a bunch of people who it was their first time hitting a rail and I would say maybe 60% of the ladies who started out on the easier feature got to the challenge feature by the end of the night,” Byrd said.

Walsh is now the creative director for the club, putting together the film edits for YouTube and Instagram. “My dad put me on skis when I was three, and we moved a lot when I was growing up because my dad was military but one of the only things that we consistently did amidst all that change was chase snow and go skiing,” Walsh said. 

Walsh’s next big goal for the club is to create a feature-length ski film. “We like how college it is, we want this to be something that college kids can rally around,” Walsh said. “The whole inclusivity thing really stuck with me. I think that’s always the goal is to see how inclusive it can be,” he said. 

The club is looking into partnering with the Bridger Ski Foundation to get a permanent park put up near the Sunset Memorial Gardens on Frontage Road in Bozeman. “I think it would be super cool to do a kids rail clinic where parents can come out and bring their kids and teach them self-confidence and self-efficacy through rail skiing,” Kostick said. 

To support Jib Club, follow them on Instagram at @jib_club_msu join their email list through CatsConnect.