Competitive alpine skiing in College

Parents Forum
1

Does anyone have insights on competitive alpine skiing opportunities at the following schools?

Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Georgetown, Cornell, Notre Dame, USC, Princeton, UPenn, Northwestern, UVA, UCSB

I believe Harvard, Dartmouth and BC are in NCAA so to get on a team in those schools would be nearly impossible as they source from ski academies, right?
Or do each of those schools also have a team that compete in USCSA as well?
Even so, I wonder if even for a 2nd tier team in those schools, they’d be ultra-competitive skiers from ski academies…

My daughter has been racing since age of 10 and is now junior in high school and would like to continue ski racing but she only trains/races on weekends…so not competitive enough anymore at this age (when she was younger she’d consistently place in top 3 in local races but she doesnt ski enough hrs anymore in high school to remain that competitive)… well …she loves to ski and would still like to do so in college; so trying to figure out a bit what are the options?

I also assume that w/ this kind of profile, her ski experience would just be treated as another extra curricular during admissions, correct? Should she even contact coaches (if there’s one at those schools - how do we even find out?) to see whether they’d take her at that school if she were to be accepted?

Any insights from anyone that’s gone ahead of us would be GREATLY appreciated

2

Here’s the link to Cornell’s team:

It’s student run and competes in USCSA.

The contact info for the captains is on the site so your D can reach out to them with any questions.

The mountains closest to Ithaca aren’t the greatest but still a lot of fun.

And yes, her skiing would be treated like another EC if she isn’t recruitable.

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thanks so much!

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Not an expert by any means, but a quick search turned these up:

Hope it helps.

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5

My D24 has been racing for ten years. She will do a club team in college, she’s not committed enough to do D3. You can search D1,D2 and D3 ski teams online. Denver, Dartmouth, Boulder are some big ones.
My kid will do club team depending on which school she lands at. I know Syracuse and Lehigh both have club teams, they compete vs other schools in the Northeast and I think school subsidizes some of the costs. Check each colleges clubs and organizations! They will list it if they have a club.

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Thank you!

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thank you

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Skiing at the club level won’t help admissions. It only helps at the D1 level. Those athletes are all ultra low FIS point holders.

You can find a list of all the club teams linked below.

https://uscsaregistration.sportngin.com/

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9

Thanks

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10

This looks more on-point: USCSA - Prospective Athletes - USCSA - United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association. There is a list of member institutions.

I would certainly consider the distance to snow with any school. Stanford has a club but it takes at least 3-4 hours to Tahoe with luck - kind of makes it hard to spend much time on the mountain if you have classes M-F. Westminster University is just 45 minutes to Park City, which I suppose is why it had a long running partnership with USSA for their Olympic bound skiers.

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11

Neither Westminster or The U have club teams. Both have just their NCAA teams. There’s no better place to go to school than SLC if you love snow sports. I have several friends who did either medical school or their residency there. They all were able to ski at least 50 days. One skied 100 during residency!

One also needs to consider if the quality of free skiing matters to them. There are a bunch of great race hills in the northeast, but the free skiing is pretty weak.

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