Wood River Ability Program Developmental Camp this week
By KELLY JACKSON<br><i>The Wood River Journal ~ Sun Valley</i>
When Sean Halsted tells people he&#039;s a skier with the national team, most assume he&#039;s referring to downhill.
With a grin he informs them that he is with the United States Disabled Cross-country Ski Team (USDST) and an avid sit-ski competitor.
&#8220There&#039;s people out there that need to get in these things,&#8221; Halsted said. &#8220They just don&#039;t know it.&#8221;
He said when he was injured in 1998, at the age of 27; he thought life&#045;as he knew it&#045;was over. However, Halsted was first introduced to basketball and learned from playing that competitively that there was a world of options for disabled individuals to excel athletically.
Now, he said, it&#039;s almost like there are too many choices.
&#8220I have to focus more to maintain a competitive edge,&#8221; Halsted said.
He tried Nordic skiing for the first time in December 2001 at a winter sport clinic for disabled Americans, but really got into it in 2005. His interested peaked as he learned more about the Paralympics and last year he tried out for the USDST.
Halsted, along with Andrew (Andy) Soule of the USDST, competed at the Wells Fargo Boulder Mountain Tour this past weekend. The athletes and a handful of other coaches, including Jon Kreamelmeyer (USDST), Jon Engen (cross-country Olympian and biathlon), Bob Balk (national sit-ski champion and Paralympics medalist) and Beth Livingston (former Paralympian) are helping out this week at The Wood River Ability Program&#039;s Development Camp. The camp, according to Mark Masts, executive director of the Wood River Ability Program, is a collaborative effort with the USDST with an intention of recruiting promising athletes to learn more about cross-country skiing. The camp is underway this week, Monday, Feb. 5 through Thursday, Feb. 8. 
Camp began on Monday at the Sun Valley Nordic Center and the group plans to explore terrain in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area over the next few days as well.
&#8220The camp is in its sixth year,&#8221; Masts said. &#8220Over the first five years the camp has produced four athletes that have earned spots on the US Team. The number of athletes invited never exceeds seven in order to assure that each athlete receives a lot of personal attention.&#8221;
In addition to producing US Team hopefuls, the goal of the camp is to create ambassadors for the sport of adaptive skiing, and&#045;of course&#045;to have fun.
The later goal was definitely no problem for the crew of five camp attendants assembled just outside of the Sun Valley Nordic Center Monday afternoon, with everyone energetic and enthusiastic as they geared up for another run.
Students included Linda Lareau, 26, and Tracy Pavlicek, 41, both of Minneapolis, Sean O&#039;Neill, 41, of Philadelphia, Tilly Hatcher, 31, of Atlanta and Jarem Frye, 28, of just outside of Portland.
Lareau, Pavlicek, O&#039;Neill and Hatcher are all honing their skills on the sit-ski, while Frye is at the camp to test out a knee replacement he invented.
&#8220I&#039;m working on making standup skiing possible for above-the-knee amputees,&#8221; he said.
Frye spent years perfecting the prosthetic knee, made out of mostly aluminum, so he could continue to telemark ski. It has springs that work as the quadriceps, he said. Without the spring, the knee could not support body weight, he added.
Frye has used the knee himself since 2000 and it was made available for others to purchase in July 2006 from www.symbiotechsusa.com.
While he designed the knee for telemark skiing, he said it can be used to snowboard, wakeboard, rock climbing and many other sports. 
Frye, who jokes his background began with Lego&#039;s, invented the knee piece for his individual needs, but continued studying aerospace engineering and perfecting his design so that others might benefit.
&#8220I&#039;m out here to try it out,&#8221; he said. &#8220I&#039;m the test dummy of my own product.&#8221;
Halsted and Frye, as well as everyone else involved in the Wood River Ability Program Development Camp, are hopeful the camp will continue to generate interest in adaptive skiing and introduce more people to an ever-growing array of options.
&#8220The real bonus is that (the camp) is here to show people,&#8221; Halsted said.