As a long time club (part-time) not a ski academy coach, I am a huge fan of collegiate ski racing whether it's NCAA or USCSA. Over the years I have had kids race at both levels, although the majority of them compete at the USCSA level as that conference is growing while NCAA skiing continues to shrink, with some schools teetering on the edge due to funding challenges. NCAA skiing only has a total of 22 schools competing between the East and West. In SR Media today the first page announces "UVM Catamounts Dominate New Hampshire Carnival". On the EISA circuit UVM has traditionally been the Alabama of eastern skiing. However it's hardly a fair competition when UVM has nearly all their skiers in the first and second seeds of every carnival. So for the men's GS UVM had bibs 7,1,33,20,27, & 34 and the women's bibs were 9, 23,7,6, & 36. I couldn't find the 6th female skier from UVM on the results sheet. I realize this is FIS skiing but in this case it's kind of like Alabama is playing Florida Atlantic in football, but the Crimson Tide gets to receive kick-off every three out of four times. Again I love college ski racing, but it makes you wonder what is wrong with NCAA alpine skiing???
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NCAA alpine skiing it not a fair level of competition.
- Thread starter wolcoma
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I don't have an answer except to say ski racing was never a fair sport. It is exactly like when an academy has a weekend off from FIS racing, and decides to show up at a local USSA race for "practice". I was an official at race once that traditionally was entered by local USSA weekend clubs and local college club teams. This particular year, a New England academy entered and you can imagine the results. Their kids crushed everyone else for the top spots. They had 30 and 40 FIS point racers going up against the weekend club racers and the college racers who's clubs were not that serious. Total destruction. Was it fair? No. But as I pointed out to all the grumpy parents of the weekend kids, all the academy kids were USSA as well as FIS members, so they had every right to use their USSA membership to enter the race.
Well, is the point to win THAT race? Or to improve your standing in the points system? To improve your standing in the points, you want good racers in the race.
As for college racing, I thought that the problem with NCAA was all the top racers came here on scholarships from Europe. I haven't looked at that issue in quite a while. But again, is the point to win an individual race or to race against other racers and improve your standing? Maybe in college it's for the race, more like football. But if you are a real racer, it's your points that tell the tale. Take all those races out of the USAA and FIS points system and the top racers will go elsewhere, like the national teams, for their jollies, and the kids who want to win for the home team and not themselves will be left.
As for college racing, I thought that the problem with NCAA was all the top racers came here on scholarships from Europe. I haven't looked at that issue in quite a while. But again, is the point to win an individual race or to race against other racers and improve your standing? Maybe in college it's for the race, more like football. But if you are a real racer, it's your points that tell the tale. Take all those races out of the USAA and FIS points system and the top racers will go elsewhere, like the national teams, for their jollies, and the kids who want to win for the home team and not themselves will be left.
It’s the inertia dilemma in skiing, Better skiers get better training & resources. They get better & get seeded better & this gets them better resources and training.
Just look @ the rosters- my wife skied for Plymouth back in the day. Whilst running the Fall SkillsQuest, the current team showed up & they were awesome in pushing the juniors & academy kids….. they also let me snag a pic for the wife.
Problem is they only have 1-2 Americans. So the system set up to the the next step or the u19 kiddo is now closed & truncates development.
That sounds like people earning opportunities. How does that make it unfair?
How old are the non-Americans?
Because we loose our best kids as they can’t afford academies.
Most are older than typical college age of 18-22.
I recently had a sub 40 point skier quit outright because he was competing against “Norwegians who have been PG’ing for 5 years prior to college..” (his words)
It was like a group of NFL players playing against a high school team. Academies have training and development resources that no weekend kid and most college programs can not compete against. The reality of ski racing is no kid from a weekend program or most college club programs are in the same zip code as a full time academy kid who is racing NorAm or in Europe most of the winter. Just because low point racers show up at a race, doesn't make it a good point race for everyone else. Unless it is one of those notorious point shaving races...
The reality today is to earn opportunities in ski racing it is all about who has the biggest bank account. That in its very definition is not a fair sport.
There was no point. Academy kids don't give a shit about USSA points. It is all about FIS points. Literally, the academy kids showed up because the FIS races they were scheduled to attend were cancelled earlier in the week and according to them (in their words) "we had nothing better to do" In all fairness, I think their coaches thought it was a good opportunity to support this particular race (which was a fund raiser) and give the kids an additional race day.
True what you say about NCAA racing. Many are from Europe. Many are in the mid 20s as college "freshmen". Many have spent years in Europe doing nothing else in the winter other than race training at an extremely high level. It is what it is unless the rules change. Mostly likely, they will not.
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Ah - the academy skiers aren't necessarily the best at the point of intake?
They are as long as the best come with a large bank account.
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PG -“post graduate” for foreign readers.
Are there any restrictions/qualifications for being a pg one has to meet?
For better or for worse, it seems now to be rare for a high school senior to go straight to a competitive NCAA team. The upside is that there are multiple programs that support those athletes looking for another year (or three) of training and maturation before trying to ski D1, so there is a system to support that next level of development so long as you can afford to pay for it. The downsides I can see are cost and overall commitment (ie do you want to put in the time and effort to possibly be competitive, or do you just want to go to college directly from high school?), but it seems like there's more room now for Americans to race D1 without giving up on the national team and World Cup.
If I had the free time, I'd love to compare some carnival start lists from 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago to see how many "normal college aged" athletes were on the list. My perception could be off, but I think the numbers used to be rather different.
For PG training? None that I am aware of. It is pretty common for academy kids in the U.S. to train for 1 or 2 years after high school (if you can afford it, we are talking tens of thousands of dollars per season for PG training) either to try and lower their FIS points or if nothing else to take time to figure out what they want to do in life. Put it this way: the vast majority of academy kids don't exactly need to get a full time job to support themselves after high school.
The numbers were way different in the past. It has changed recently such that in 2019 something like 70% of the men and 80% of the women in the NCAA Championships were both foreign "students" and of non-traditional college age.
Would also like to add after working with some PG racers in the U.S., most do not benefit from it. They reached their lowest points in their academy years and most flat line or even go backwards. The reality is that even with PG years, your chance to get on the U.S. team or a D1 team is next to nothing. If you were going anywhere in this sport, you would have been "discovered" by USST while at the academy. And every PGer knows this. It is very hard to stay competitive when you know unless you get struct by a bolt of lightning, you don't have a good chance of success at PG. Most would have been better off going straight to college or trying to train PG in Europe (which opens another can of worms for an American).
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