“Wait, we have a ski team?”
“Is it a club team?”
“Are you sure you don’t mean ski and snowboard club?”
Hearing that Boston College has a varsity ski team comes as a shock to many students. And the biggest shocker: they’re kind of awesome.
Maybe the reason why the ski team manages to fly under the radar is that they have to travel so far from campus. While it’s an undertaking to convert Conte from a basketball court to an ice rink, making it into a ski
mountain is a bit out of the capabilities of the Athletic Department. So every morning during ski season, the twelve members of the men’s varsity ski team leave around 6 am to travel to mountains in New Hampshire, just under a two-hour trip.
Then, every Friday and Saturday during the six-week long competition season, they compete against other schools, mostly in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Though there are schools that BC is more competitive with, “we mostly see the same kids we grew up skiing with,” said team member Dario Baldoni, A&S ’12, “so there’s not much rivalry.”
While time consuming, most team members see the travel as a huge perk of being on the team. “My favorite thing is definitely the fact that we get to ski and travel so much for free,” said Baldoni. That, and all the free UnderArmour gear.
Though not a scholarship sport, the ski team almost entirely consists of recruited athletes. “For a while we accepted walk-ons,” Baldoni said, but everything has changed since the team switched divisions this year. They are now in the highest possible division, the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association, which has made the team more elite and selective. “It’s already different,” Baldoni explained, as fewer number of team members compete each week, dropping from ten to six. Though the new division is also more individual (previously top scorers’ times were added together when teams were ranked) it is now purely individual, although there is still a strong team bond. “There’s a pretty good team dynamic,” Baldoni said, “we do a lot of stuff together.”
Whether that “stuff” is preseason training, running hills and hitting the gym starting in September, or hanging out as they travel to Nationals out west or competitions throughout New England, Baldoni represented the entire team’s sentiments when he said, “I get along really well with all the guys on the team.” Though he noted that “my roommates probably think I’m gone for two months” during competing season, the team and its members are an important part of the BC community, and don’t let their busy schedules get in the way of that. Though they often have to choose classes based on their ski schedule, he felt certain that “school does take priority.”
Though graduation from Boston College marks the end of most ski team members’ racing careers, it does not signify the departure of skiing from their lives. Many live in ski towns and continue to enjoy the sport, an unsurprising fact given their level of dedication for so many years.
When many students think of skiing at Boston College, they think of SnowJam or the annual Ski and Snowboard Club Running of the Bulls party. However, there is a small, slightly more legitimate group of skiers on campus. While it might be tricky to make this the new main spectator sport (road trip to New Hampshire, anyone?), the Men’s Varsity Ski team is a hidden asset to BC athletics.