A giant in the ski industry and in the Boulder community
Ron LeMaster was widely known as a world-class ski instructor, but the University of Colorado community and the larger Boulder community are lucky enough to know LeMaster as one of our own.Ěý
LeMaster was a ski coach for the CU ski team, the U.S. ski team, as well as for Vail and Aspen ski resorts. Described as an “artist of motion dissection”Ěý by CU Ski Team coach Richard Rokos, Ron LeMaster published several books, including The Skier’s Edge and Ultimate Skiing.Ěý
ĚýLeMaster earned his bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at Boulder while with the CU ski team. After earning his degree, Ron LeMaster spent much of his career working as a programmer for IBM in Boulder. On the weekends, he worked with skiers everywhere on improving their technique.
Daughter Alexis Lemaster describes how Ron LeMaster balanced his many interests throughout his life: “He did everything at the same time. [On the weekends] he would go teach skiing and at night he would just stay up writing articles about skiing. I remember I would fall asleep to him typing, because he would just be up until 2 a.m. working on something, and then he’d wake up and ride his bike to work.”
In addition to writing books and articles, Lemaster became an advisor for our own Colorado Engineering Magazine, where he was able to use his editorial knowledge to support student work.
Ron LeMaster’s teaching gifts touched the Boulder community in so many ways. For a time, Ron LeMaster worked for Nobel Laureate Carl Weimann to develop a physics class that made content more comprehensible and engaging for students.Ěý
Knowledge of physics in particular is what made Ron LeMaster’s work so unique as a ski instructor, as he could break down the science behind downhill skiing to improve speed and efficiency. LeMaster possessed such a depth of knowledge that he was an instructor to other coaches. He often attended conferences and seminars to share his knowledge across the country so that more could benefit from mastering the fundamental movements of downhill skiing. Also unique to LeMaster’s work was the use of photography and videos taken by LeMaster himself.Ěý
Friend Carl Newman explains, “He would go to races and take pictures…in those days they were slides. He would take the slides and make a collage of them and draw angles and vectors, showing what [the skiers] weight distribution was, and that was the basis of his work: What the physics is of what the skiers [are] doing, what the right way to do it [is].”Ěý
Ron LeMaster’s work in the ski industry showcases the qualities we all seek out in good teachers and mentors: expertise on a subject built through technical knowledge and personal experience, a talent for communication and a deep passion for those he worked with.
“So many different types of people go skiing,from all over the world, all different demographics,” Alexis LeMaster said. “You’re interacting with so many different types of people, so you start to learn how to interact with such a wide breadth of people and personality types, and you get better at learning where you need to assert yourself and where you don’t. [Ron was] really good at finding a way for that specific situation or person to understand what he was trying to portray.”Ěý
Ron LeMaster took some time early in life to focus entirely on ski instruction, later transitioning to work at IBM. Even off the mountain, he still did what he loved.Ěý
“He loved [computer engineering] and he always told me that he loved his job.Ěý
He was a big advocate of it [no] matter how much money it’s going to pay you; if you don’t like it it’s not worth your time,” Alexis Lemaster said. “He definitely lived the same kind of way he told people they should live.”Ěý
For many students in college, entering the workforce can feel like making a choice between a passion and a job. Ron LeMaster is an example of a better way: choosing to find a job you enjoy and are good at, while carving out time for the things you are passionate about.
“I think there is really something to be said about getting the opportunity to really figure out what you love and what can serve you within what you love [Ron] saw that engineering is… more reliable…but over time [both computer engineering and ski coaching] ended up both serving him in life,” said Alexis LeMaster.
Although Ron Lemaster was known for his work, he was loved for investment in the lives of those around him.
“In undergrad, [Ron] was just a guy that loved to ski and when you skied with him you would come back at the end of the day better than when you went out,” said friend John Clark. “Even in the old days I would ski with him, and I was just amazed that he enjoyed skiing with me, even though he could have been out shredding the mountain with his high performance guys. He enjoyed the camaraderie of it, the friendship of it.”
Often he would bike up Boulder Canyon, stopping to talk with friends that lived along his route. Friend Burr Touhey described how he would bike up and tell her about birds he had seen, as he knew Burr was passionate about birdwatching.Ěý
“That is what everybody loved about my dad…he had the time to take with you, and he was really curious and interested in just about anything, and so he’d talk to you about anything. He genuinely cared about people, you know, so he would remember special things,” saidĚý Lemaster.Ěý
A beloved member of the Boulder community, Ron LeMaster touched the lives of so many, and inspires us to carve the perfect line between serving our communities and building a life we love living.