USST, "Project 26" Plans for the Future. New USST Criteria.

[Muleski]

They are "nice articles". Norwich is very much the rural, high end community associated with Hanover NH. If you are a professional working in Hanover, with at Dartmouth, it's graduate schools, the DCMH {the hospital}, or in a variety of other ventures and you want that feel.....Norwich is attractive. As in Lyme, NH, the home of the Dartmouth Skiway, where the Ford Sayre program is based. Great program for kids. In the last 15 years or so, I believe that most upper end skiers "outgrow it", and move on to one of the Eastern ski academies. Most might wait until they are the right age to leave.....rather than leave early.

I know almost nothing about any of the disciplines other than Alpine. The last national team skier that I know of who called Norwich home, and actually went to Hanover, NH high school was Felix McGrath,and that was about 40 years ago. He spent winters as a winter term tutorial kid at Waterville Valley, BTW. So Ford Sayre was not where he honed his craft. He BTW, was a good friend Mr. Shaw's in the USST days. He married a Norwegian,and has lived there for years. Kids are skis racers.

I'm guessing that if we scanned the alpine ranks of BMA, GMVS, SMS, KMS, etc.over the past ten years, we'd see a number of kids form Norwich, with families that fit right into their demographic. McGrath's dad was a professor at Dartmouth.

So as an incubator, I might look at a few other towns and schools. Steamboat, aka SkiTown USA, for sure. In the East, I believe that Burke and Stratton a re almost head and head having had 100 USST members graduate.

It's nice article......and probably a nice book. Starksboro, VT has more alpine Olympians and/or USST members. All form the same family, too. Expand that to include the alums of Cochran's and all of the family, and it's probably close to Norwich! And it's not the game type of Vermont town as Norwich.

Any press about skiing and the USST is good, though. Any. And yes, these kids are well rounded, based on all of the examples. Fact.....you aren't getting a USST jacket, as an alpine racer by being so well rounded. Right or wrong.

 

[S.H.]

They are "nice articles". Norwich is very much the rural, high end community associated with Hanover NH. If you are a professional working in Hanover, with at Dartmouth, it's graduate schools, the DCMH {the hospital}, or in a variety of other ventures and you want that feel.....Norwich is attractive. As in Lyme, NH, the home of the Dartmouth Skiway, where the Ford Sayre program is based. Great program for kids. In the last 15 years or so, I believe that most upper end skiers "outgrow it", and move on to one of the Eastern ski academies. Most might wait until they are the right age to leave.....rather than leave early.

I know almost nothing about any of the disciplines other than Alpine. The last national team skier that I know of who called Norwich home, and actually went to Hanover, NH high school was Felix McGrath,and that was about 40 years ago. He spent winters as a winter term tutorial kid at Waterville Valley, BTW. So Ford Sayre was not where he honed his craft. He BTW, was a good friend Mr. Shaw's in the USST days. He married a Norwegian,and has lived there for years. Kids are skis racers.

I'm guessing that if we scanned the alpine ranks of BMA, GMVS, SMS, KMS, etc.over the past ten years, we'd see a number of kids form Norwich, with families that fit right into their demographic. McGrath's dad was a professor at Dartmouth.

So as an incubator, I might look at a few other towns and schools. Steamboat, aka SkiTown USA, for sure. In the East, I believe that Burke and Stratton a re almost head and head having had 100 USST members graduate.

It's nice article......and probably a nice book. Starksboro, VT has more alpine Olympians and/or USST members. All form the same family, too. Expand that to include the alums of Cochran's and all of the family, and it's probably close to Norwich! And it's not the game type of Vermont town as Norwich.

Any press about skiing and the USST is good, though. Any. And yes, these kids are well rounded, based on all of the examples. Fact.....you aren't getting a USST jacket, as an alpine racer by being so well rounded. Right or wrong.

The Shiffrins were Ford Sayre kids. One could say they outgrew it.

If you look at the top of USCSA racing, you'll see a bunch of Ford Sayre kids. At least recently, they haven't put many into the elite NCAA pipeline. They've sent kids to SLU and St Mikes recently - not sure if any are currently racing though.

Norwich is a great town, and they certainly produce an outsize number of great athletes who compete in many sports at a high level (NCAA at least). There's not quite the infrastructure needed to produce truly elite alpine skiers, though - a more traditional academy is probably needed to do that in this day and age.

Ford Sayre does seem to produce quite a few athletes who excel on a national stage on the nordic side, at least as juniors.

 

[Muleski]

There have been a few Ford Sayre Alpine kids who have done real well at the NCAA level....good enough to make the NCAA Champs. I think the last one to make it to the USST was Roger Brown. I can't recall when Roger's time ended there {at what age}.

It's a really great community based program. And yes, like any other place that touched her, Ford Sayre likes to claim Mikaela as one of their own! It's pretty funny to talk to people who were running her age group when she was skiing at the Skiway. I'm related to one a close friend of another.

When MS was about seven, her mother {I know...shocker!} was concerned that the other kids were not close to her level, technically. Again no surprise. ES evidently thought that it would set her back to ski with those kids, and she skied with her, doing drills and coaching her pretty much every day.

And then of course when Taylor, her brother was entering the 8th grade, ES and MS moved to Burke, with Taylor. He's three years older, so she exited skiing there after the fourth grade. Age 9. Of course she didn't spend much time at Ski Club Vail either....

But yeah....a lot of Nordies, Hannah, Kevin Pearce....many athletes. And many in multi sports.

The last woman Ford Sayre skier who I knew, captained an NCAA team for a couple of years, skied in the NCAA's, and is now getting her PhD, also captained two VERY good other sports teams at Hanover H.S. Pretty unusual. Great person. Good athletic genes, as well.

 

[James O]

Another piece of the puzzle...

https://www.skiracing.com/stories/jesse-hunt-returns-to-us-ski-snowboard-as-alpine-director

 

[Muleski]

Another piece of the puzzle...

https://www.skiracing.com/stories/jesse-hunt-returns-to-us-ski-snowboard-as-alpine-director

This has been in the rumor mill for a while. Frankly, long before Riml "resigned." When I heard it, I thought "Obviously, this makes too much sense......" But I'm not posting rumors about staff leaving, let alone being replaced. I'll wait for the press releases, which hit Skracing.com first.

Jesse Hunt did a very good job during his first stint with the USST, which ended with him in the same job that he's moving into, the Alpine Director. He's a childhood buddy of Tiger's, they raced together right from the start. Jesse has a real Eastern race pedigree: MMSC {Stowe}. Burke, UVM AA, and straight to the USST to begin coaching. His last nine years have been as the Program Director at the Park City Ski Team, which has always {not quite so much lately} been a huge pipeline to the USST. He and his family have lived in Park City for 25+ years. I believe close friends of the Shaw family.

Now before you scream "nepotism", Jesse did a great job of transforming the culture of the team, so that the athletes felt like they could win, and they enjoyed it. They did win. He was the guy who started to hire GOOD American coaches. Many really good things happened with Jesse at the helm. So while some are going to be screaming that he's "part of the past", he, IMO, brings a lot of good to the table.

He knows exactly what he's taking on, and there will be no learning curve. I'm just curious about the pace of change, and what we'll see. See in terms of staff change, change in terms of what the team nominations look like.....and in particular how the whole "development" thing will look like with Sasha Rearick and Chip Knight.....also long time friends of Jesse's.

We'll see. Some coaches have already left, and I think a lot of movement is underway. Fingers crossed.

 

[Choucas]

Somewhere in this thread, the idea that collegiate ski racing (alpine and Nordic) could serve a similar role in skiing that college football, hockey, baseball and basketball do in their fields. That is, develop talented 18 - 19 year old racers for four years so that by the time they are in their early 20's they are prepared to compete at a very high level. This sounds like a great idea. The colleges would relieve the USST of some of the financial burden of developing skiers beyond their junior years. The athletes stay closer to home (or campus) to do their training and racing. They continue their education and broaden their view of the world by interacting with fellow students in the classroom and on campus. In concept it make a lot of sense.
I have 2 concerns.
1. What is the motivation for the scholarship granting schools to admit skiers with lesser talent from the US over more talented racers from Canada and Europe? They are making themselves less competitive. What's the upside for schools to do this?
2. There are only a handful of NCAA ski racing programs so we are not talking huge numbers of athletes that are going to be accommodated. It's certainly not going to be a farm system like football and basketball which draw talent to the pros from hundreds of colleges and universities. Also, some of the college programs are pretty shoestring operations. Would the USST be helping to foot the cost of beefing up these programs? I think it could work well at schools that offer scholarships and do not have stringent admission standards. It would be more difficult at places like Middlebury, Dartmouth, Williams, Colby, and Bates which are smaller schools with tougher admission criteria and no athletic scholarships. The upside is that they provide outstanding academics and close proximity to excellent training facilities both on hill and dryland along with full athletic training staffs and excellent coaching. I'd love to see this work. It makes sense on a lot of levels and seems like a viable way to take US athletes who are winning (or are darn competitive) at the world junior level and hone them for four years on our side of the pond to be competitive with their European peers.
Is there a realistic future for this?