Learning curve

In its infancy, the sport of ski racing in the United States was concentrated on the collegiate level. Dick Durrance and three Dartmouth teammates led the charge in the 1936 Olympics, for instance, and for the next 30 years, between New England and the West, collegiate-level skiers were the US Ski Team, with legends such as Buddy Werner and Rich Chaffee from Colorado lighting up the Olympic slopes of the 1960s.

Today, it is the rare exception for a ski racer to attend college on a full-time basis and be able to compete at the level of World Cup, yet according to many in the sport, the big ski colleges of the East and West contain a reservoir of untapped talent.

As the NCAA Division 1 teams get ready for their carnival season to open after the holidays -- with Western universities such as Utah, Denver, Colorado, and New Mexico expected to be in the thick of the fight for the top podium finishes, with Vermont and Middlebury College having outside shots -- the World Cup season is more than a third of the way finished.

"When they start the season in Solden [Austria] in October," said Forest Carey, Alpine coach at Middlebury, "we're still playing golf."

Carey, who skied with the US Ski Team from 1993 to 1997 before becoming an All-American NCAA racer for the team he now coaches, sees a number of problems keeping the NCAA apart from the US Ski Team, but still feels the national team is missing out on some real talent.

"The top-level racers now train year round," said Carey, whose national team career was cut short when serious knee injuries necessitated five bouts of surgery. "But here we are just starting our season in January, and the NCAA won't allow its coaches to work with athletes in the off season."

But some observers of what Carey terms the "small universe" of ski racing see a glass half full rather than half empty. Carrie Sheinberg, an eight-year member of the national team and three-time national champion who skied in the 1994 Olympics, remembers when as a junior at Stratton Mountain School she was recruited by the national team. Her high school coach at the time refused to let her go until she finished school.

"It was a little different for girls," said Sheinberg. "If a girl wasn't on the [US] by the time she was 17 or 18, she probably wasn't going to make it."

Carey, who tried to ski his way back onto the national team by competing at Middlebury, believes the gap between the two is simply too great at this point for college racing to be seen as a minor league-feeder system for the national team. He skied at Middlebury with the idea of raising his game enough to make the jump, but "the college tour doesn't facilitate the highest level of racing," he said, "and I wasn't able to get the necessary support." Carey estimates that as many as 80 percent of the top ski racers in the country ages 18-24 are in the college ranks. But without flexibility from the NCAA schools -- most of which do not consider it it their mission to prepare ski racers for the next step -- and the USST, much of that talent will never flourish.

In his first year as head coach, Carey led his Panthers to fifth place nationally, winning all but one Eastern carnival -- including knocking off Vermont in its carnival for the first time in three decades, an amazing feat for a non-scholarship Division 3 school.

Despite the talent gap, at last year's National Alpine Championships in Alaska, the slalom finish looked like an Eastern college convention, as six of the top 12 finishers were from New England colleges. Two of them, winner Jimmy Cochran from UVM and NCAA champion Paul McDonald from Dartmouth, were able to ski their way onto the US Ski Team, a development which Carey finds somewhat ironic.

"McCarthy wasn't even on the radar screen," he said, "and Cochran is just such an unbelievable talent with this incredible work ethic. But the way Paul and Jimmy were able to make the leap up must open the [USST's] eyes."

USST coaches say they now are aware of college talent, and the national team invites some skiers to attend training camps on the basis of strong NCAA championships performances. But the problem, said Carey, is the lack of exposure in the college ranks for top racing and training on the World Cup level.

"In order to get to the [US] Ski team, you have to be one of the top hundred in the world," he said. "And yet [college] racers aren't able to get five starts. I think the Ski team has to be more flexible or it's going to miss out on a lot of talent."

But the issue also cuts both ways, said Carey, who equates great skiers with great musicians or any people of high talent who are trying to develop that talent as a means of their education.

"You learn a lot about yourself when you try to compete at the top level," said Carey. "College skiing needs to look in the mirror and ask if it wants to be a development system. Are we willing to raise our level of training and racing? We have to ask ourselves whether that is our mission."

The first week of January will be the next opportunity for college racers to showcase their talent on the World Cup level, with a series of NorAm races at Sunday River in Bethel, Maine.