Among the many sledders enticed by the aftermath of Winter Storm Fern were members of one prominent student group taking on the snowy slopes of Foss Hill. The University’s Ski and Snowboard Team brought this same spirit to a competition in Gore Mountain, N.Y. on Saturday, Jan. 31.
“Things like the first snow on Foss Hill or just sledding are big parts of Wesleyan campus life,” club captain Miles Urban ’27 said. “We build those jumps out there for everyone to use.”
The Ski and Snowboard Team has been around for almost 25 years, and provides anyone interested in skiing and snowboarding the chance to compete in races across the East Coast.
The club captains have varying levels of experience on the slopes. While Ava Symons ’26 is a certified ski instructor, Paley Adelson-Grodberg ’26 first learned how to ski through in the club.
“On the morning of my first race, I was worried I didn’t belong as a new skier,” Adelson-Grodberg wrote in a message to The Argus. “We watched videos, inspected the course, and members assured me that even if I was disqualified it would be okay.”
Adelson-Grodberg quickly gained confidence with the support of the club. She skied behind the club’s more experienced members, and would eventually go on to be given awards for “sending it” on difficult runs.
“We went to [local hill] Powder Ridge the other day, which is like 15 minutes from campus, and [Adelson-Grodberg] hit a massive jump,” Tristan Larsson ’26 said.
Urban credited the team’s strong campus presence for inspiring him to reenter the sport.
“I think the ski team here really reignited my love for skiing,” Urban said. “I just kind of witnessed the vibrant community that the ski team carried on campus and I joined in.”
While beginner skiers and snowboarders are welcome to race, there is a framework to competitively ski as well. The team competes in the United States Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association (USCSA) in the McBrine Division. This provides opportunities for students to competitively ski and snowboard at the national level. Just two years ago, the team sent one skier, Eli Seaver ’24, to nationals. In fact, Seaver was the first skier in the McBrine Division to qualify for nationals as an individual.
“With a little bit of school funding and some of our own fundraising, we spent enough money together to go to Sugarloaf [Mountain],” Larsson said. “It was a group of four or five of us, but [Seaver] was the only one who got us qualified.”
This semester, the season was cut from five races to two due to new University regulations surrounding the Student Activity Fee. The reduction in races puts qualifying for nationals out of the question.
“To get [to nationals], you do have to compete in all four or five races to get the points necessary,” Symons said. “So this semester, no matter how well someone does, we won’t be able to qualify because we just [won’t] have points as an individual or team.”
Each student pays a $390 Student Activities Fee along with their tuition. Skiing is expensive, so the ski team receives a big proportion of the Student Activities Fee. While each student spends an equal amount of money on student activities, club members in the past got to ski different amounts.
“And they just were saying that’s unfair, and while that does make sense, it prevents us from having anybody who races twice,” Symons said.
This season, the University paid for two trips with 20 people each, the rule being that each is a completely different group of people. In some ways, the scope of who gets to ski is widened, and in other ways, competitive ski racing has become less accessible to students.
The club is pivoting from these cuts to the race season with more local activities, meeting up to ski down Foss Hill and Powder Ridge.
“We will always be out there on Foss, with all this snow,” Urban said. “We will have people sledding or skiing, and [Adelson-Grodberg] is doing jumps off of [Powder Ridge]. That, I think, shows that everyone really, really wants to ski. This team will find every means possible to give people [that] opportunity.”
According to the Ski and Snowboard Team, the ability to compete in races with any level of experience is part of the magic of the team. On Friday, Feb. 6, they’re heading up to Magic Mountain,Vt. for their second and last race of the season.
“Some teams are all in speed suits and raced all of high school,” Urban said. “We are these kids who have skied [only] a handful of times about to go down [the slope]. We’re throwing snowballs, we’re out there, we’re loud. We set the tone out there.”
Larsson echoed the sentiment.
“[That] is another reason it is a shame that we can’t [compete] in all the races,” Larsson said. “They’re probably so bored.”
Claire Farina can be reached at cfarina@wesleyan.edu.
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