GOOD TO SEE YOU @Atria !!! You are missed! I hope things are going well for you!
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@buuzn03 All well and good! Started college so its been wild 
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Where did you end up? I cannot believe you are in college— it seems like just yesterday, you were dealing with the BS process!
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@Atria That is great news about Middlesex. Thank you! That is a school that really intrigues us for a number of reasons.
@ProfMomof3 That jump from U12 to U14 can be a big one. DS did not start any racing until he was a U12 so he was still getting the hang of things when he became a U14. To be honest, he is still getting the hang of things now as a second-year U14! It is great that they enjoy it so much, though.
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PM’ed you 
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If you have any questions about MX, let me know 
Thank you! We will probably take you up on that!
I would absolutely recommend checking out Berkshire School. They have a strong varsity and JV team with a great culture. They are also about 5-10 minutes from their home mountain. And, most importantly, the academics provide strong opportunities at all levels
Hey all — I wanted to pop back in here because kiddo knocked it out of the park as a first year U14 and became over the course of the season one of the top ranked 2008 birth year females in slalom in the US. So we’ve got a dilemma now — we are trying to figure out the strongest school academically where skiing is still secondary but isn’t a joke. Her home coaches have said that many of the HS teams are a big step below non-school-affiliated FIS teams. Berkshire keeps coming up again and again (I believe the would allow her to ski FIS and for the school team) but their college placements seem quite a step below places like Deerfield and Middlesex. HELP!
Hello,
Do you mean you believe Berkshire’s Alpine ski racing team’s college placements are below DA and MX, or are you referring to school-wide matriculation?
Is your kiddo focused on college-level ski racing down the road?
You have a challenge on your hands. It’s a big step down from a major ski academy to even a Berkshire, NMH, Holderness, etc, when it comes to time on snow and coaching capability. What’s your daughter’s goal? If it’s to ski for a top D1 program then she needs to be at an academy. Academics will suffer but that’s the trade-off. It’s not that the academy education is bad, but that it will simply not be the same as at a better school.
The schools I mentioned will let her ski USSA through the school ski program, including FIS races when she’s old enough. I don’t know the matriculation rates to top D1 ski programs from them, though.
My daughter faced the same challenge. She was a top 5 skier in her region at a similar point in her career as your daughter. We strongly considered a ski academy but, after spending a day on campus and skiing with the team she decided that she wanted more school and less skiing. It was a tough choice but that’s the direction she took. We did enroll at a school with a ski team but it’s very much a “have fun” kind of team rather than anything serious. We’ve haven’t decide yet whether to ski for a USSA club this winter.
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One additional item, GMVS is trying to couple an academy ski program with stronger academics. Again, won’t be as a top level traditional boarding school but may be worth checking out.
I was referring to school-wide matriculation. I did the calculation and it’s something like 4-6% from Berkshire go into Ivy/Stanford/MIT/UChicago vs. DA and MX being more like 20-25%. I don’t really think competitive skiing is in her long-term future — to my knowledge, Dartmouth and Cornell are the only Ivy with a D1 ski team and I don’t want her options to be so limited. FWIW, she is just an amazingly hard worker (both on the hill and in the classroom) and competitive by nature and doesn’t possess some prodigious, innate ski talent.
Remember this about matriculation: the only matriculation that really matters is your own kid’s.
It does not matter if a school’s matriculation stats at “top” schools looks above average, if the kids matriculating at the “top” universities all have some hook that your kid lacks.
Similarly, if the matriculation stats at a hidden gem look less impressive to you, that does not necessarily mean that your kid couldn’t get into an Ivy/Stanford/MIT/UChicago from there. Universities accept people, not schools.
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I think @QueueCT summed up the realities of competitive alpine racing pretty well. The elite racers are on the hill 6-7 days per week, and are either at a ski academy or live in a ski town that affords this kind of on-slope time.
For fun racing, Holderness, NMH, Berkshire, DA, MX, SPS can offer light racing exposure, at least compared to the hard-core academies. WIth limited training and coaching, racers from these schools are most likely not going to be recruited by the Dartmouth or Middlebury ski teams.
The ski academies offer “lighter” academics because the kids are on the hill most of the time, and then the kids are off to South America or Whistler or Europe depending on the month. We know some of these kids and programs, and it’s amazing how little studying happens at these academies.
I am not an expert on the skiing offerings at Middlesex, but I’d reach out to the coaches. Something to keep in mind is how much your child would need to do outside of normal school skiing. Middlesex has a demanding, immersive 6 day schedule with Saturday AM classes and Saturday afternoon athletic competitions for whatever sport they’re in. Kids do 3 sports a year, and while there’s flexibility maybe in junior/senior year on that, in freshman/sophomore year it might be hard to do anything on top of the MX skiing program, especially because of the academic workload. If you’re serious about skiing, that might not be a compromise you are willing to make. Check out the program description page on the athletics website - you might have your daughter email the coaches herself with questions. Personally, if I were very serious about skiing, I might try for programs closer to the mountains without Saturday obligations, but it’s obviously such a personal choice!
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Burke, Gould, Killington, Green Mountain all do a great job of placing their students in selective schools and based on the kids I know who went this route, they are prepared for those schools. But make no mistake, those kids ended up there because they were recruited as skiers, not because they were just great applicants. If
It’s definitely a tricky decision without a really accurate crystal ball (and good luck with that!)
Getting admitted to a a hyper competitive school without a hook is quite difficult, so the benefit of developing a good hook can’t be overstated. But yes, being at a school designed around skiing also has its costs.
You might get lucky and be able to get an excellent academics at day school that will give you the flexibility to train and race seriously. Realistically, a traditional BS will force a choice - it is less likely to put (or support) a kid on a ski recruit trajectory.
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Cornell is club. Harvard (M/w) and Brown (W only) also have D1 skiing
Where the heck does the Middlesex ski team actually ski?
Nashoba Valley