Refreshing contrast

Following their historic NCAA title victory Saturday, Dartmouth University's skiers, still dressed in green speed suits and with Nordic women's coach Cami Thompson sporting green-and-white pompoms, retired to the lobby of the Grand Summit Hotel at Attitash for a barbecue.

Read party, or so went my natural expectations.

When I played football in high school and college, win or lose, postgame was party time. Thus, this bunch's beating of the best -- from the West -- convincingly triggered my expectation that a bash was at hand.

Skiers from all the East teams -- University of New Hampshire, Colby, Bates, Vermont, et al -- schmoozed with their counterparts from the West -- Denver, the University of Colorado, Utah, Montana, Northern Michigan, and New Mexico.

The last time Dartmouth won a piece of the national ski title -- tying Denver in 1976 -- these athletes weren't born. And the last time Dartmouth won it outright -- 1958 -- few of their parents were born. So this historic season for the Big Green -- 6-0 in the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association carnival season, beating Denver by 50 points -- seemed to cry out for a wild celebration at Attitash.

But it didn't happen that way. Little by little, after photos and chit-chat with other skiers in the lobby, the Dartmouth skiers began peeling away. I shared a van ride back to the village with two women Alpine skiers.

"So where's the party?" they were asked. "You guys don't seem too elated."

It all came down to one word: Exams. On Saturday, even before the afternoon began to darken, reality was setting in that they had to get back to campus to study for exams Monday.

"Don't your professors cut you any slack, given the circumstances?" they were asked.

"Yeah, the slack they cut is if you missed an exam this week because you were ski racing, you could make it up. As soon as possible," one of the women explained.

What a healthy contrast to the hysteria that surrounds so many sports in this country. Here are athletes, every bit as accomplished as the college basketball players in Gainesville, Fla., the football players in Columbus, Ohio, catching a quick bite with their parents before heading back to campus to ice their knees and dig into the books. Within hours of the slalom finish at Attitash that secured the Big Green's win, the historic nature of their accomplishment was fading into the reality of academic life.

Unlike success in other American sports, accomplishment in ski racing, even on the level of the NCAA national championships, is pretty much confined to a proud family, smiles on campus, and self-satisfaction. Never is that truer than in Nordic skiing, where fewer Americans participate and in which the conditioning and training are brutal -- and done far from the eyes of fans.

Yet it was Dartmouth's Nordic racers who set up the team win. In two races, Elsa Sargent, Sara Studebaker, and Susan Dunklee turned in 185 points of the 698 overall total. And on the men's side, the trio of Ben True, Michael Sinnott, and Glenn Randall added 162 points to set the stage for the powerful Alpine team.

They did it with almost professional calm, considering the weight of history entering the event. Though Dartmouth had won few national titles since the resurgence of college ski racing following World War II, the history of the sport at the Hanover, N.H., campus is legendary. It was a Dartmouth professor, C.A. Proctor, who pioneered ski racing after Fred Harris in 1909 started the Dartmouth Outing Club.

Proctor's son, C.N., competed in the first Olympic Alpine races in 1928, and it was his father who set the first slalom course in this country and created rules adopted universally by the FIS. The lineup of Dartmouth stars also is legendary -- Otto Schneibs, Walter Prager, Dick Durrance, Tom Corcoran, Brooks Dodge, and Ralph Miller.

It was doubtful those names were in the minds of Alpine skiers Michelanne Shields, Lindsay Mann or Hayley Jones as they delivered 163 points to the Big Green effort last week.

Nor was history on the mind of Dave Chodounsky, who survived a near race-ending mishap in the first leg of the slalom Saturday to deliver 38 huge points for a second-place finish. Evan Weiss finished second in the giant-slalom, and Alex Felix placed twice in the top 20 over two races. Total points for the Alpine men: 183.

Felix's story is one that likely will be lost to history because his collegiate record did not live up to his promise as one of the top junior racers in the country. Felix, who began his racing at Nashoba Valley as a student in the Cambridge public schools, was recruited to Dartmouth but tore his ACL before his freshman year. He had surgery and rehabbed in time to make the carnival team, but early in the season he tore his meniscus and had more surgery.

After another recovery he made the team again and won a race before tearing the same meniscus in a race, requiring a third surgery. So his effort this year to make it to the Carnival season, then contribute in the national title quest was, if not headline grabbing, certainly the stuff that athletic heroism is made of.

For this year's national championship ski team, there is no March Madness, no cheering crowds, and few opportunities to carry their sport to the next level. But on the Hanover campus this week, there is a bit of quiet satisfaction among a group of athletes who cut for themselves a slice of history, the remembrance of which might bring a moment of pleasure in the midst of a tough exam.