Irv Kagan

Most Hall of Fame ski stories start at a very young age but Irving Kagan was close to forty when he first set foot on a ski hill. That was in 1966 when his eldest daughter wanted to learn how to ski. It wasn’t long before he was hooked, building a home at Sugarloaf just two years later.

Shortly after the move he enrolled his son Dan in the Sugarloaf Masters program, an outgrowth of programs at New England ski areas that focused on precise execution of standard ski technique. They had evolved into freestyle competition that included trick skiing that was eventually formalized as ballet, aerials and mogul competitions.

By the early seventies, Irv was taking his son to meets throughout New England and saw that the competitions were rather loose, varying considerably from place to palce in rules, scoring and format. Recognizing that to be a fair test, freestyle competition needed overall uniform organization and precise regulations for scoring. Kagan volunteered as Chairman of the Eastern Freestyle Competition Committee and put his precise engineering mind to work developing uniform scoring and judging protocols. He pushed for publication of rulebooks governing freestyle. He combined his expertise with many twelve hour days spent on the hill to develop his recommendations, which became the foundation for amateur freestyle events sponsored by the U. S. Ski Association, which replaced the ongoing professional freestyle as the leading organization the sport.

Kagan developed a point based seeding system for freestyle which became the standard nationwide and was part of the reason USSA took on freestyle as a national competition. His efforts were rewarded by election as chairman of the National Freestyle Competition Committee, then to the USSA Board of Directors, and next Vice President of USSA’s Freestyle program.

Through his work from within the organization, introducing rigorous protocols for training and certification Irv got freestyle inverted aerials into the USSA program. As freestyle flourished under USSA and Kagan’s leadership he moved forward with development and team selection from entry level to a Development Team, Nor-Am Team and National Team.

At the same time he was working relentlessly on the international scene to see that freestyle would become an Olympic event. In 1992 he got his reward when the US received two medals in the new event and since the US has dominated Olympic Freestyle Competition. Through most of two decades he served in many ways, with one volunteer position piled on top of another while running a successful business, also donating many hours of his Management Information Systems employees and computers to provide the seeding for freestyle skiers. His service included being director on the boards of the Sugarloaf Ski Club, CVA, the Sugarloaf Ski Education Foundation, and numerous non skiing business and service organizations. He organized and ran the first Freestyle World Cup in the US.

For his work he received the Julius Blegen award from USSA nad he is descired as “The Father of Freestyle Skiing as an Olympic Sport”. This total devotion to a segment of skiing in a time of great need has earned Irving Kagan a rightful place in the Maine Ski Hall of Fame.