Sig Evensen (1924-1999) Sven Evensen called Monday morning, Dec. 13 to pass along the sad message that his father, Sigurd had finally lost his battle with cancer. See Oct. 17 report.

The weekend of the Salisbury Winter Sports Association annual ski jumping tournament has, through the years, been the occasion for many special events and special moments. The 1998 festivities included the introduction and inaugural presentation of the Sig Evensen Award to ski jumper Taylor Hoffman of Lake Placid. The award will be given annually to the champion in the Junior Class at the Eastern U. S. Ski Jumping Championships. The Championships are traditionally hosted by the Salisbury Winter Sports Association, and the award was introduced at the Saturday banquet at The Town Grove in Lakeville, CT prior to Sunday's Championship competition.

The award is named for Sig Evensen, long time ski jumper, international jumping judge and technical delegate, tireless hill preparer, friend to all jumpers and staunch supporter of the sport of ski jumping. Sig began his ski jumping somewhere between Oslo and Lillehammer, Norway, where he was born in 1924. The best five years of his skiing life were stolen when the Nazis occupied his homeland, but Sig somehow managed to escape to Sweden where he joined special group of men who were trained and prepared to establish structure and maintain order when the day would come that Norway would again be free. Even during these trying years, Sig and a few friends would manage to steal off into the forest and do a little skiing, keeping the flame alive.

At the war's end, Sig was one of the first to return; he was assigned to duty in Mandal, at the southern tip of the country, where he carried out his semi-military duties and where he caught the eye of a slender blonde teenager named Birgit. One thing led to another and Sig and Birgit married and started a family. They came to the U.S. in 1956 and Sig immediately resumed his ski jumping activity, travelling from his new home in Brooklyn to Bear Mountain for a January competition. "I von that day" he says, with a little grin.

Sig became a regular at Bear Mountain and all over the East, following the big hill tour through Lake Placid NY, Salisbury CT, Brattleboro VT, Laconia and Berlin NH. Sig's carpentry business grew and in due time, he built a home in an oak woods in New City, NY, just south of Bear Mountain. His many awards now fill a big trophy case in the downstairs recreation room. He was also a graceful cross country skier and competed in Nordic Combined as well as special jump competitions. Always the first one to arrive in the morning at Bear Mountain, Sig could be found before tournament time, packing the snow on the landing or raking the track. And he was the unofficial official track setter, always making the first jump of the morning.

Sig found many ways to contribute and to help out his fellow jumpers. If you cracked a ski, someone would say "Sig can probably fix that." Sig continued ski jumping well into his forties, but also added officiating to his palette of contributions to the sport. He qualified at the highest level and served, either as judge or as Technical Delegate, in World Cup and Championship meets in North America, Japan, and all over Europe. On an assignment, between judging sessions when other officials might be chatting or playing politics, you might find Sig up on the takeoff applying his talents with a rake, putting his magic in the track. A man of few words, Sig always has a bit of advice and encouragement for up-and-coming young jumpers.

Sig is the longest standing member of the Eastern Ski Jumping Committee, serving under four different chairmen named Peter, and five more, not named Peter. He has served as President of the Nordic officials association, and was inducted into the Master Ski Jumpers Hall of Fame in 1991.

One sentence from the 1998 Salisbury introduction tried to put all of this into just a few words: "I know of no one who, over the last forty years, put as much of himself into the sport of ski jumping as Sig Evensen."

Between all his world class duties, Sig does not forget his roots in club-based ski jumping, so well exemplified by the Salisbury Winter Sports Association. He and many others return every year to renew old friendships and to work alongside the long time volunteers who are the ones who keep the sport alive and make ski jumping available to still another generation of youngsters.

Credit for conceiving and creating the Sig Evensen award goes to jumper and trainee judge Mark Levasseur, who made all of the arrangements.