NCAA alpine skiing it not a fair level of competition.

[Erik Timmerman]

"Fair" or not, it's good skiing. Here's an actual Vermonter winning a race for UVM!

 

[fatbob]

Many more on rosters with hopes to make it to World Cup afterward. NCAA allows for fairly high-level skiing (and access to the NorAm circuit) while also getting an education, exploring other interests, etc. It's definitely an option for those Euros who are on the cusp of making it on world cup but haven't quite made it.

Thanks. I guess it's just the more "pro" aspect of US college sport plus maybe exposure to some international coaching ideas help in making more rounded competitors.

 

[wooglin]

Edie Thys Morgan on the NCAA:

Hey Hey, NCAA | Edie Thys Morgan and Racer eX

Two World Championship medals in two days—Laurence St Germain and AJ Ginnis show that talent development is a long-term game college skiing is built to play.

racerex.com

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Hell yeah.

 

[S.H.]

Edie Thys Morgan on the NCAA:

Hey Hey, NCAA | Edie Thys Morgan and Racer eX

Two World Championship medals in two days—Laurence St Germain and AJ Ginnis show that talent development is a long-term game college skiing is built to play.

racerex.com

adding in the team parallel, Leif Kristian Nestvold-Haugen (DU) won silver for Norway, and Erik Read (DU) won bronze for Canada. It's real.

 

[BC.]

Hell yeah.

Go Cats!

 

[wolcoma]

NCAA "Team Skiing" really???? This has got to be the dumbest and most unfair practice in all NCAA sports and not even close. Again I love college skiing and enjoy following the Carnivals throughout the season. On Saturday UVM once again dominated the SLU Carnival at Whiteface in historic Lake Placid. However, just look at the SL results, as UVM men went 1, 3,5,6,12 with the top UVM's four best skiers wearing bib #3, 7, 6, & 13. Meaning all four UVM top finishers were in the first seed. Meanwhile many of the schools competing didn't have a single racer in the first seed. St. Lawrence the host school had one skier in the first seed bib #8 and their next best skiers were bib #53, #63 and #55.. Meanwhile I remember a few years ago the SLU alumni worked very hard to keep the varsity ski program from the chopping block. If I were the SLU athletic director I would not be too happy with this scenario. Fortunately most AD's in the EISA have no idea how seeding and scoring works in NCAA alpine ski racing.

The United States has dozens of colleges and universities near major ski resorts and lots of mid-size ones too, but we only have 22 NCAA alpine ski racing members. I have no problem with NCAA skiing being aligned with FIS, but the competition is absolutely unfair for most of the teams.

 

[S.H.]

NCAA "Team Skiing" really???? This has got to be the dumbest and most unfair practice in all NCAA sports and not even close. Again I love college skiing and enjoy following the Carnivals throughout the season. On Saturday UVM once again dominated the SLU Carnival at Whiteface in historic Lake Placid. However, just look at the SL results, as UVM men went 1, 3,5,6,12 with the top UVM's four best skiers wearing bib #3, 7, 6, & 13. Meaning all four UVM top finishers were in the first seed. Meanwhile many of the schools competing didn't have a single racer in the first seed. St. Lawrence the host school had one skier in the first seed bib #8 and their next best skiers were bib #53, #63 and #55.. Meanwhile I remember a few years ago the SLU alumni worked very hard to keep the varsity ski program from the chopping block. If I were the SLU athletic director I would not be too happy with this scenario. Fortunately most AD's in the EISA have no idea how seeding and scoring works in NCAA alpine ski racing.

The United States has dozens of colleges and universities near major ski resorts and lots of mid-size ones too, but we only have 22 NCAA alpine ski racing members. I have no problem with NCAA skiing being aligned with FIS, but the competition is absolutely unfair for most of the teams.

is it dumber than football picking playoff teams with essentially no objective criteria?

Skiing isn't entirely a team sport. There are individual titles at play here too. It's a high level ski race. There are seeding rules. The seeds and start orders are earned.

You can propose USCSA-style start orders, but ... I'm not sure any athletes or ski programs are really looking for that.

 

[Average Joe]

The age old dilemma of the “fairness” debate.

Legit question, if they changed NCAA D1 rules to evenly seed the participating schools, would the long term result in a more or less competitive North American circuit?
As pointed out here, USCSA uses a school type seed system, and it works well for them. Participation at USCSA races is on an upward slope.
But the NCAA D1 circuit is totally different. I’m not sure if long term viability of the circuit would be enhanced by going back to school seeding, I’d be interested to hear the opinions of someone on the inside comment on that.

 

[wolcoma]

I think most ski racers and NCAA programs would like to see collegiate ski racing actually grow at the D-1 level. I am not saying NCAA skiing should adopt high school or USCSA seeding rules, but it's ridiculous when some schools have all their skiers seeded in the bottom seeds. At the very least the top three skiers from each school should have a seeding spots within those first three seeds. I do know there are some schools within NCAA skiing whose AD's would love to cut the ski program. Most of these AD's are only focused on the major sports. Again I am all about accessibility and growing ski racing. One of my relatives raced for Johnson State back in the 1970's and all these years later he still can't believe a school in the middle of the Green Mountains in Vermont no longer has a varsity ski team. There are still coaches floating around who are Johnson State ski team alumni. Although now Johnson State is Northern Vermont University.

 

[BLiP]

I don’t have any answers but I have to imagine there is going to be difficultly finding any degree of “fairness” when you have such vast discrepancies in NCAA programs. Part of the issue is this isn’t all DI. In my limited knowledge, NCAA skiing includes DI, DII, and DIII. Is there any other college sport where you regularly have DIII schools competing against DI schools? There is an inherent degree of unfairness in that fact alone. A DIII is never going to be able to compete with the finances and the resources of a DI (not to mention the availability of athletic scholarships). You could seed all of Colby-Sawyers’ skiers at the top of the list, and (with all respect to them, it is a great school) they are likely still not going to compete with Dartmouth or Vermont.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I think most ski racers and NCAA programs would like to see collegiate ski racing actually grow at the D-1 level. I am not saying NCAA skiing should adopt high school or USCSA seeding rules, but it's ridiculous when some schools have all their skiers seeded in the bottom seeds. At the very least the top three skiers from each school should have a seeding spots within those first three seeds. I do know there are some schools within NCAA skiing whose AD's would love to cut the ski program. Most of these AD's are only focused on the major sports. Again I am all about accessibility and growing ski racing. One of my relatives raced for Johnson State back in the 1970's and all these years later he still can't believe a school in the middle of the Green Mountains in Vermont no longer has a varsity ski team. There are still coaches floating around who are Johnson State ski team alumni. Although now Johnson State is Northern Vermont University.

Johnson State just cut their library. And might cut ALL sports.

 

[S.H.]

I don’t have any answers but I have to imagine there is going to be difficultly finding any degree of “fairness” when you have such vast discrepancies in NCAA programs. Part of the issue is this isn’t all DI. In my limited knowledge, NCAA skiing includes DI, DII, and DIII. Is there any other college sport where you regularly have DIII schools competing against DI schools? There is an inherent degree of unfairness in that fact alone. A DIII is never going to be able to compete with the finances and the resources of a DI (not to mention the availability of athletic scholarships). You could seed all of Colby-Sawyers’ skiers at the top of the list, and (with all respect to them, it is a great school) they are likely still not going to compete with Dartmouth or Vermont.

Except in the east, who is giving out athletic scholarships for skiing? UVM/UNH? Are SLU/Mt Mike's/BC/PSU giving out scholarships? If they are, why aren't they better?

Dartmouth/Colby/Bates/Middlebury/Harvard/Williams aren't ... Ivy/NESCAC rules.

I don't think NCAA skiing is going to grow ... because if it's going to be an avenue for elite skiing ... it's already pretty good there. It's not like there are elite skiers looking for a place to ski. If it starts to include more schools for sub-elite skiing ... then it's just USCSA, which is an awesome, separate, thing. There's some great skiing at the USCSA level, and even more fun, camaraderie, and growing the sport.

 

[BLiP]

Except in the east, who is giving out athletic scholarships for skiing?

DIII cannot give athletic scholarships. So, the only possibilities on the East would be BC, Dartmouth, Harvard, UNH, UVM, and St Mikes (DII). You’ve correctly cut out two of those already. And I doubt BC or St Mikes are handing out much for their alpine programs. That leaves two likely contenders - neither of which should be a surprise to anyone.

Edit: While Dartmouth cannot officially give out athletic scholarships, across all sports, the Ivies find creative ways to make sure their desired athletes get some form of academic scholarships and/or aid. As do the DIIIs.

I don't think NCAA skiing is going to grow

I agree with you there.

 

[sparty]

Saint Mike's did have at least one skier on a "academic scholarship" despite a less than stellar academic record while I was there, so regardless of the official position, I'm guessing they provide some level of support. They did also just take two of three podium spots in one of the recent carnival races and have four qualified for nationals this year.

Three of them are Norwegian, though.

 

[Choucas]

There are no academic scholarships at the NESCAC (Middlebury, Williams, Colby, Bowdoin —nordic only at Bowdoin) schools. Need based scholarships only.

 

[JonathanShefftz]

I don’t have any answers but I have to imagine there is going to be difficultly finding any degree of “fairness” when you have such vast discrepancies in NCAA programs. Part of the issue is this isn’t all DI. In my limited knowledge, NCAA skiing includes DI, DII, and DIII. Is there any other college sport where you regularly have DIII schools competing against DI schools? There is an inherent degree of unfairness in that fact alone. A DIII is never going to be able to compete with the finances and the resources of a DI (not to mention the availability of athletic scholarships). You could seed all of Colby-Sawyers’ skiers at the top of the list, and (with all respect to them, it is a great school) they are likely still not going to compete with Dartmouth or Vermont.

When I was coaching in EISA, the so-called "DI" claims greatly upset me: NCAA skiing is an explicitly non-divisional sport, with a single national championships.
Some Division III NESCAC schools certainly have impressively fast ski teams, but athletic prowess does not translate into NCAA Divisions.
(For example, the NESCAC tennis team I played for greatly benefited from the sociodemographics of the student body -- i.e., lots of players, even unrecruited, had attended the kinds of fancy prep schools and suburban public schools that are big into tennis -- but we were still a Division III team, even though we were so much better than the Division I team up the road that we never even bothered scrimmaging against them.)
Specific rules do exist for a sports team to compete at a division other than its institutional affiliation, but that is not even a possibility in skiing.
When I tried reporting it to the NCAA, the answer I got was (I believe this is an exact quote), not everything that is wrong or unethical is illegal.

I was also upset with the seeding practice for the first run. Felt like starting off behind the 50-yard line.
(Not that I know anything about football, other than attending USCSA ESCA league meetings at the BC DI football stadium VIP rooms, which was quite the shocker coming from a DIII school.)
Along with other issues, that caused me to pull our team out of EISA and into the top division of USCSA ECSC.

After I had moved on from coaching, that team lost its varsity status, as did others.
Those cuts might have been inevitable, but another problem was how my own alma mater lost its varsity ski team: comingling varsity and club teams in the same USCSA ECSC Division made AD's question varsity status if a varsity team was already competing against club team.

I kept advocating for an ECSC realignment that put all the varsity teams into the top division of USCSA ECSC (which had occurred to some extent in the early 90s after my alma mater lost its varsity status), but this was perceived as varsity snobbery by the better club teams, even though I kept emphasizing it was only a fight for survival (of varsity status).
BC, PSU (fka PSC), and CSC saw the warning signs and defected from USCSA ESCS to EISA so as to preserve their varsity status. However, they end up looking absurd in the team results since they lack nordic squads. Of course the combined rankings are absurd since the Ski Meister days are long since gone -- like combining your tennis team results with the squash team results, or something like that.
Then Bowdoin has the exact opposite problem since the alpine team lost varsity status yet the nordic squads somehow retained it.

What all this adds up to or leads to, I have no idea.

But interested how Harvard really got behind its program, which is quite the contrast to when I coached there while in grad school.
If someone had told me back then that Harvard would be beating my alma mater arch rival (at least for my tennis team, not my ski team) Williams College, I would have been just as shocked by that eventuality as to learn I'd be eschewing chair lifts and instead skinning up mountains and organizing skimo races...

 

[Mark1975]

If you think that no one cares about NCAA D1 in the East then you've probably not attended the UVM Winter Carnival. When I've attended there we more people at the finish than some WC races.

Yes, I have attended the UVM Winter Carnival. Multiple times. It does get a nice crowd for a ski race. I have also attended many other carnivals in the East that have very little crowd interest. For example, pre-pandemic, I was at the St. Lawrence Carnival at Whiteface. The only people at the finish were the racers parents and maybe boyfriends/girlfriends of the racers. Whiteface was very busy that day, and the skiers there had for the most part zero interest in what was going on. On one chair ride up, a couple noticed the race course. One said "Wonder what's going on over there" The other replied "Probably a high school race" That is the state of ski racing for the vast majority of people in the U.S. that actually participate in skiing as an activity.

Look, I know where you are coming from. I love ski racing. I have spent most of my life in it either as a competitor, coach, or official. It has been pretty much my life for over 50 years.

Compare that to this:

A friend of mine, who is a Penn State alum, invited me to a home game this past season vs Minnesota. He tells me "You better get a room in State College months ahead of time". So I drive down to State College, PA for the game. There must have been 500,000 people in State College that weekend. Nearly 110,000 people in the stadium for the game and it looked like another 200,000 people tailgating in the parking lot. It was totally insane and that is an understatement. That is when you realize nobody cares about college ski racing, for that matter, any ski racing at any level, in the U.S.

 

[Jack skis]

Mark1975 you wrote: "That is when you realize nobody cares about college ski racing, for that matter, any ski racing at any level, in the U.S." I disagree.

Signed

Nobody Jack

 

[Mark1975]

Mark1975 you wrote: "That is when you realize nobody cares about college ski racing, for that matter, any ski racing at any level, in the U.S." I disagree.

Signed

Nobody Jack

Don't feel bad being in the minority on this issue.