Luke Bodensteiner recalled the inaugural United States Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) rookie camp four years ago with a head shake and a long laugh.

“We locked them in the classroom for three days and briefed them until they couldn’t stand it anymore,” said Bodensteiner, the executive vice president of athletics for USSA. “Now, we try and keep them on their feet. We’ve made it much more interactive and much more active.”

The rookie camp, originally designed to mesh disciplines across the board in a three-day educational camp, returned to Park City last week as 42 athletes crammed into classrooms and worked on team-building events.

“I know most of the alpine kids already,” said 18-year-old Park City Ski Team alumna Sydney Staples, who has been alpine skiing since age three, “But I’ve never met anyone else involved with these other sports.

“This is our team. We’re the United States Ski and Snowboard Team. If we don’t know each other, then we can’t be a team.”

When the athletes weren’t listening to speeches on expectation or involved in a media-training course, they were competing in soccer matches and climbing the ropes at the National Ability Center.

“We’ve spent some time talking about our expectations of them, both as athletes and ambassadors of the sport,” Bodensteiner said. “It’s also a time where we can build the team. We’ve got athletes in all different disciplines here who don’t really know each other. It’s about creating a bigger team and emphasizing our collective success across all disciplines.

“As we kind of expanded the scope of our programs and the services we had to offer, we really felt it necessary to give the kids a good kickstart and share with them, all the resources available either in the teams, the Center of Excellence, or the education programs.”

USSA announced team selections in May, according to Bodensteiner, and assigned each rookie from every team to venture to Park City for this camp.

Bodensteiner said, for the first time, parents of the athletes were flown out for the camp and briefed on what it would be like for their children to be a member of this elite unit.

“That’s always been a mystery for the parents,” he said. “It was dynamite. Many pieces of information were addressed.”

Benji Farrow, a snowboarder from Vermont, addressed the crowd in a mock press conference Friday evening at the Center of Excellence as the 42 athletes gathered for the final time.

Farrow said his success and experience at the rookie camp wouldn’t have been possible without the help of his parents and the sacrifice of his four younger siblings.

“I wouldn’t be able to do all that stuff if it wasn’t for them,” he said. “They’ve done so much for me.”

Other rookies on the mock press conference panel were women’s cross-country skier Sadie Bjornsen, men’s alpine skier Robby Kelley and women’s mogulist KC Oakley.

The keynote speaker at the event Friday was Olympic silver medalist Jeret “Speedy” Peterson, who addressed the rookies, doling out pointers and advice on how to handle life in the limelight.

“When you’re wearing that USSA jacket,” he said, “you’re not just another kid at the party.”

“I can’t stress how important it is to take advantage of all this,” he said.

Peterson encouraged all the athletes to take benefit of the amenities available to them at the Center of Excellence in Park City.

Staples said the experience was especially enjoyable with the camp being held in her backyard.

“I know the drill here,” she said.

Bodensteiner said after four years, the program and its athletes are seeing the benefits of what it means to meet, greet and grow as an entire team. The last Olympic Winter Games was a case in point, as the U.S. finished with a team-high 37 medals.

“The cross-pollination between teams is very important,” he said. “That was one of the big performance factors for us in Vancouver.”