A Love Letter to College Skiing

What’s up, SkiPost fans!

I hope that everyone has had a great summer of enjoying the warm weather - and maybe even a little training too!

This is my first time writing for SkiPost, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some perspective that might not be otherwise. While the life of an elite athlete - particularly in endurance sports - is often defined and dictated by the parameters of eat, sleep, train, the recent years of my career have featured a lot of extracurricular activities.

Like many junior skiers in the country, my goals in high school were primarily centered around continuing to ski in college. I played pretty much all of the sports growing up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and while I was on alpine skis at the age of three, I didn’t start cross-country skiing until I was 12. I’m glad that neither of my parents were competitive skiers, and honestly I wish that I had continued playing soccer all the way through high school. I began to specialize in skiing my sophomore year, and I made the US Ski Team my junior year in April, 2019.

With being named to the national team and beginning to achieve some international success at World Juniors, the prospect of skiing even beyond college started to become a goal as well. I was set to make my World Cup debut at World Cup Finals in Canmore, Alberta in March, 2020 - until the pandemic had other plans.

For me, the pandemic was a time when I became singularly focused on skiing - but problematically so. Like so many during that time, the social isolation was a detrimental departure from the life balance and fulfillment I was getting in the form of my senior year of high school and an amazing group of friends - none of whom Nordic skied. During the next 18 months, I trained more than I ever had (and probably more than could be productive at 18 years old). While I did achieve some great results, at the end of it all, I had failed to achieve my biggest goals and was beginning to feel burnt out. Then I went to Dartmouth. While it took me some time to adjust to the lifestyle and unique demands of the old college on the hill, it has been the greatest privilege, blessing, and opportunity of my life.

In my experience, skiing for Dartmouth - and I’d like to extrapolate to college skiing in general - is so special because it’s like having your cake and eating it too, which is in stark contrast to my cake-less and famished experience during my gap year. Not only does it provide you with the intellectual and social stimulation and fulfillment I was so sorely missing, but it also does something incredibly special by turning a highly individualistic sport like skiing into a team sport.

That’s not to say that representing the Stars and Stripes in a relay isn’t special - it really is. Two of my most memorable days on skis have been the relay races at World Juniors. However, living, eating, training, learning, dreaming, and even engaging in occasional (or frequent) debauchery with your teammates who also happen to be some of your best friends is something so precious I can’t quite articulate it - it’s a feeling that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. Even when I was aware of how special it was, it went by in a flash, and now I’m clinging on for dear life to the little time and NCAA eligibility that I have left.

That’s not to say that it’s always all sunshine and rainbows; balancing it all can be challenging at best and impossible at times. Something’s got to give at some point, but that’s kind of beautiful in its own way. The perfect is often the enemy of the good, and I wouldn’t trade my experience at Dartmouth for anything - which is a sentiment echoed by many people who have the privilege of skiing in college (particularly on the EISA). Sometimes, when you can’t possibly do all the things, you can still try, knowing you’re going to fail anyways.

So, as I come towards the end of what’s been a painfully nostalgic, beautifully special chapter of my life, the real question is how to find some semblance of what made Dartmouth so fantastic in regular life. I’ve come to accept that it probably never will be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try anyways. I recently had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Dartmouth’s President, Sian Beilock, to discuss my experiences at Dartmouth, what makes this place so unique and enduringly special, and the power of belief, which is appropriate given President Beilock’s work in academia on the science behind performance under pressure and the lack there of (choking). I reflected on the fact that I did both of those things at the recent NCAA championships on our home soil. But, crucially, that’s not what I’ll remember most 50 years from now. Especially on the Saturday race - the 20km skate that I’d dreamt about and trained towards for years - I didn’t achieve my goal.

There was so much magic and energy in the air that it didn’t really matter. While it’s bittersweet, I’ll miss the fall term for the first time, and the FOMO will be devastating at times to be sure. While it remains to be seen what exactly this next season and beyond hold for me, I leave Dartmouth grateful for the time, experiences, and friends I’ve had here - and full of belief for what’s to come.

If there are any of you - particularly juniors hoping to ski in college - who wish to hear more about any of my experiences (or anything really), please reach out.

Thanks for reading, GBG and go college skiing!
JSH