As a snow-starved winter turns to blustery and reticent spring, an ill wind blows across our empty ski trails. What tumbles on that breeze brings relief and celebration to uncounted families; however, the changing season marks a sorrowful loss for the Nordic community. The gusts of April and May whip into mailboxes and under doors, leaving in their breathless wake college decision letters—for so many high school seniors, the start of an exciting next chapter; for too many athletes, the end of their time on skis.
The numbers don’t add up. At the 2024 Minnesota State Championships, 32 Boys’ and Girls’ teams qualified to race; there are nearly 50 Boys’ and Girls’ teams across Wisconsin, and another dozen in Michigan—to say nothing of Colorado, Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska. There are nearly five thousand high school Nordic skiers in Minnesota alone—a number that dwarfs the total number of collegiate racers in the United States. Every winter, thousands of young athletes are falling in love with our sport. And every spring, thousands of high school seniors are leaving it, for a simple reason: they don’t know they can ski in college.
Even as Gus Schumacher’s World Cup win at Wirth Park in Minneapolis and Jessie Diggins’ yellow-bibbed dominance 0f the 2024 World Cup have electrified American Nordic, the odds of racing after graduation seem much longer when an up-and-coming athlete leaves the dreamlike throng of a home-soil World Cup. The NCAA is, well, elite-level skiing—a Spartan circle of competition that the average high school athlete has neither the speed, nor the resources, nor the desire to pursue. But the NCAA is not the entirety of college skiing—and to continue pretending it is does a grave disservice, not only to students, but to the vitality and durability of our sport. We are letting the next generation of coaches, of volunteers, of Birchleggers slip through our gloves and disappear into the snow. This should not, and cannot, be the case.
The United States Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association (USCSA) is breaking trail towards a future in which every high school skier who wants to race in college can do so. And the Midwest is at the vanguard of that ambitious effort. This winter marked five years of Nordic competition in the USCSA’s Midwest Collegiate Ski Association (MCSA). Scarce as snow was, the Midwest season began with a record membership of 20 university teams, and culminated at the USCSA National Championships, with no fewer than ten All-American finishers in each day of racing, six Individual and seven Team single-day podiums, and two Individual and Team overall podiums. In scarcely longer than the time it takes an athlete to graduate, the Midwestern collegiate scene has been entirely transformed—from a vacant wound between the Appalachians and the Rockies, to a ruddy artery pumping dozens of new teams and hundreds of new competitors into the USCSA.
MCSA teams run the gamut from varsity programs to student-governed clubs. Led Coach Kevin Brochman, the St. Olaf College Women secured their third consecutive USCSA National Championship Title in 2024. Led and coached entirely by the skiers themselves, the UW-Madison Women were the Nationals runners-up this year. Teams may be sprawling of scrappy—over 100 athletes on the UMN-Twin Cities Nordic Ski Club, while fewer than ten skiers compete for Luther College. They may be established or burgeoning, recreational or race-oriented, but they accomplish a common goal: keeping students connected to one another, and connected to our sport, through college and beyond. The same is true of the broader USCSA. A prospective skier can choose from Cornell to Colorado-Mesa, from the Air Force Academy to Maine-Farmington—a program exists that fits their level of commitment, their athletic aspirations, and their academic priorities.
Our job—your job—is to help them find it.
Your task is simple. If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you have a young skier in your life. You may be sitting across the kitchen table from them; you may race them on a bike this summer, teach them in the classroom in September, or cheer alongside them on some frozen racecourse next January. They have big decisions to make, ambitions to pursue, and formative experiences ahead – and they shouldn’t need to leave the Nordic community to do so.
Those young skiers in your life, please ask them one question: “Have you thought about skiing for the USCSA?”
To learn more about college skiing, visit uscsa.org and skimcsa.com.
Luke Dykowski is the Nordic Coordinator for the Midwest Collegiate Ski Association.
