STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Heather Flood Daves skied in the Warren Miller film “Steeper and Deeper.” Marc Mast has helped hundreds of wounded warriors work through injuries incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan to find joy in skiing. And Jonna Mendes has helped more than 460 student athletes from around the world achieve their dreams, after fulfilling her own dreams as a two-time Olympian downhiller.

These athletes, along with ice dancer Judy Blumberg and hockey player and coach John “Cub” Burke,  were inducted this week into the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame before a packed audience at Ketchum’s Community Library, with more watching at home via livestream.

“It’s impressive how many world-class athlete are amongst us who call the Wood River Valley home and how they contribute to this community,” said Mary Tyson, director of the Center for Regional History, which organizes the every-other-year event.

Heather Flood Daves, who captained a Community School soccer team where she was one of three girls on a mixed gender team, jumps over a Chrysler at a ski meet.

• Heather Flood Daves skated in Sun Valley’s ice shows but ultimately decided to concentrate on ski racing with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. She qualified for multiple Junior Olympics races and she raced in the U.S. Nationals from 1986 to 1988.
  
  

  She was captain of the ski team at Middlebury College, named an NCAA All-American three times and won the 1991 NCAA Slalom Championship. She raced on the Women’s World Pro Ski Tour from 1992 to 1998 before returning to sun Valley where she has volunteered for SVSEF and the Learn to Ski and Race program at Rotarun, winning the Intermountain Division Volunteer of the Year award.

  
  
  
  

  She also has helped coordinate national races held in Sun Valley and has taught the DIVAS women’s ski program at Sun Valley. Off the ski slopes, she has volunteered as the team manager for several youth hockey teams, thanks to her children’s love of hockey.

  
  

  Many of the students that Jonna Mendes works with at the Sun Valley Ski Academy were in the audience cheering her on.

  
  

  “Heather creates an environment to help children be successful,” said Adele Savaria, who introduced Flood Daves.

  
  

• Chantel Westerman told how she covered Olympic ice dancer Judy Blumberg while a reporter for ABC.

“I thought, ‘Ohmigosh, who is that girl? She’s incandescent.’ I followed her the rest of her career—I always thought that she skated with her heart, that she seemed to lead with her heart. And when I moved here and realized she lived here, I practically stalked her going to eat at Gretchen’s and watching her on the ice.”

Judy Blumberg and her partner Michael Seibert competed in the second Olympics after ice dancing was made an Olympic sport.

Blumberg learned to skate at age 10 after falling in love with a red satin and velvet skating outfit.  She described for the audience how she learned discipline, focus and to keep going as an ice dancer. She worked with a mentor from American Ballet, and Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill taught her how to be professional.

The summer of 1980 was all about America’s hockey team, she said, noting the U.S. hockey team’s Miracle on Ice beating the Soviet Union in the gold medal game. But it was also the year that ABC asked Blumberg and her partner Michael Seibert to be the first skaters to go to China.

There were not many skaters in that country then, said Blumberg, who would go on to adopt a Chinese orphan Etienne who is the love of her life.

Blumberg and Seibert competed in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, just missing a medal after an Italian judge contended that  the music they skated to wasn’t fit for ice dancing. They won numerous National Championships and World Championship and Skate America medals. The two then delighted audiences skating in Sun Valley’s summer ice shows after resort owners Earl and Carol Holding invited them to perform.

The inductees’ bios can be seen at the Wood River Museum of History and Culture in Ketchum.

“The most rewarding part of skating is that it’s still part of me,” said Blumberg, who serves as a technical judge. Working with students, she added, “is ever so much more rewarding than not getting an Olympic medal. It’s so rewarding when kids come back to thank me…they thank me for making them stick with it.”

• John “Cub” Burke not only played on the first Sun Valley Suns hockey team but went on to coach the Sun for 16 seasons, becoming the all-time leader in wins and games coached as he recruited players from across the country. He also was one of the first Sun Valley Youth Hockey coaches.
  
  

  He told the audience that he was particularly proud of the hundreds of dollars that the Suns have raised for nonprofit youth organizations in the valley through the Suns Foundation that he, Davis Love, David Hutchinson and others founded.

  
  
  
  

  “Everything I did, every hour I put in was a labor of love,” he said.

  
  

• Bob Balk, a Winter and Summer Paralympian, called Marc Mast an unsung hero: “He’s done so much for others without calling attention to himself,” he said.
  
  

  Mast studied geology and environmental science in college, but his love of skiing parlayed into a career as an adaptive ski teacher and U.S. Paralympic Nordic Team coach. SKI Magazine once named him one of the top 100 ski instructors in North America.

  
  
  
  

  “I grew up during the Vietnam War and did not want to go to Vietnam, but I always thought I should serve,” Mast told the audience. “Adaptive skiing is just teaching someone to use their equipment in the most efficient manner possible. And, with Sun Valley having a world-class ski school, I got to work with World Cup skiers who taught me a lot about how to best teach others.”

  
  

• Jonna Mendes, competed in the 1998 Nagano Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. She medaled in the 2003 Alpine World Championships and earned two national titles in Downhill and two national titles in Giant Slalom.

Will Brandenberg, SVSEF’s alpine program director, said that Mendes—now director of the Sun Valley Ski Academy--had come to a community with an “amazing ski program in the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation and an amazing school in Sun Valley Community School.”

“And she tirelessly works to bond them together,” he said.

“I help young ski racers have a fully supported high school experience, working with some of the best ski coaches in the world at Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation,” said Mendes.

Bios of Hall of Fame inductees hung on the walls at the Ski and Heritage Museum in Forest Service Park before the museum moved to its new building catty-corner from the library this summer Tyson said the museum is looking at the possibility of finding a way to honor inductees on the wall along the alleyway. She is also trying to build an online site for Hall of Fame honorees that would include the videos shown during their induction.