People saying that how much money your parents have and where you live doesn't matter, really?
Any kid that is good enough to be age claiming and get noticed on ns had been coached. I know this is a generalization and there may be some outliers but for the most part you have to agree.
Money:
Coaching isn't cheap, summer camp isn't cheap, ski gear isn't cheap, driving back to and from to the hill isn't cheap, and season passes or day tickets on vacation aren't cheap.
Sure, make the argument that anyone can make it if they try hard enough blah blah blah. That's all fine and dandy if you're old enough to work, but we aren't talking about people who are, thus it's an irrelevant argument.
Time:
Some parents just simply don't have the time to ferry their kid back and forth to the hill. If your parents aren't into the sport, it's likely that you don't ski near as much as someone whose parents are. Even more so, they now have school programs dedicated to young kids focusing on skiing. If you're an average kid, you really just don't spend as much time skiing as kids going to those programs.
Location:
Not only does proximity to a ski hill matter, but which ski hills you can access greatly impacts how good you can get. Yeah some kids from the midwest can get pretty damn good but i guarantee that they've made trips out west at some point. Speaking from a purely park standpoint, you can get pretty good with the right amount of drive even if you're at a small hill, however you'll be using lots of the other two things I mentioned. Speaking on big mountain skiing, well it's pretty obvious that you have to live somewhere with real mountains to get good at it.
All in all, if you're young enough to be age claiming, chances are that you owe a fair amount of it to your parents commitment. Hell, I'm not even that good and I still feel like I owe my parents taking me up skiing all the time when I was younger.