“You Can’t Live Nervous”

Finals week has a way of compressing time. Days shrink into problem sets and exams; nights stretch just long enough to make sleep negotiable. When Jack Lange logged onto Zoom from Hanover in late November, he was finishing his senior fall at Dartmouth, a mechanical engineering major balancing equations while packing for a training block at Silver Star. The snow out west wasn’t cooperating. Races were being reformatted. Nothing felt settled.

That uncertainty didn’t seem to bother him much.

“We’re wrapping up school right now and then heading to Silver Star next Tuesday,” Lange said. “Hopefully, the snow conditions there improve a little bit.”

It was a measured answer—calm, almost deliberately so. Over the next hour, that calm would reveal itself not as indifference, but as something learned the hard way.

A kid who wasn’t supposed to be good at this

Lange grew up in Vermont’s Upper Valley, skiing out of Green Woodlands and the Ford Sayre Bill Koch League. It was the kind of childhood that feels almost mythic now: full-moon skis to a cabin, hot chocolate on a frozen pond, friends everywhere.

“I’ve always just made sure that that’s the thing that comes first,” he said. “Getting outside and enjoying being outside and enjoying pushing myself and having fun.”

He played everything. Soccer, where he was very aware he wasn’t the best. Swimming, where he gravitated toward breaststroke. Cross-country running. Mountain biking. For a while, he did both alpine and Nordic skiing, until a choice had to be made.

“My sister was doing more Nordic and more of my friends were on the Nordic,” he said. “So I just went with Nordic.”

It wasn’t a natural fit at first. Lange remembers being the odd kid out on relay day—the one paired with a skier from another team because the numbers didn’t work.

“I wasn’t good at it,” he said simply.

What hooked him wasn’t speed. It was curiosity.

“I really like the amount that you can learn from being out in training,” he said. “Not even structured training—just being outside and having fun. I really enjoy the process of figuring out how hard I can push myself.”

By freshman year of high school, something shifted. He trained more. He paid attention. And suddenly the results were better than expected.

“That was kind of the confidence boost that launched me into, like, ‘Oh, this is something I can do.’”

The pressure builds—and breaks

Lange’s junior years were uneven. Seasons were disrupted. Races were canceled. One winter meant nine consecutive weekends racing at Craftsbury, all interval starts—an exercise in patience for someone who loved head-to-head competition.

“I love mass starts,” he said. “I love racing next to people. Mind games and competitiveness.”

By his senior year, he had narrowed his focus to Junior Nationals. The goal was simple: qualify. Nothing more.

When he arrived at the 2019 Junior National Championships in Alaska, he was the last skier to qualify from New England. He started near the back in the 5-kilometer skate race at Kincaid Park.

“My goal for the entire season was to make JN’s,” he said. “And I was there, and I was like, I’m in Alaska. This is kind of crazy.”

Mid-race, a coach called out a split.

“One of the New England coaches is like, ‘You’re like three seconds out of top ten,’” Lange recalled. “And I was like, that’s pretty funny.”

He kept skiing. He finished fifth.

“That was way, way beyond where I ever could have expected to be.”

There’s a photo from that day—Lange among a group of skiers who would later become familiar names on the U.S. Ski Team. At the time, it felt surreal. In hindsight, it was clear it wasn’t the performance itself that mattered most, but the conditions under which it happened: no expectations, no fear.

That lesson wouldn’t fully sink in until later.

Dartmouth, and the weight of wanting it too much

Lange chose Dartmouth largely because it felt right. He wanted engineering. He liked the people. He trusted the coach.

“Brayton [Osgood] is such an amazing coach to work with,” Lange said. “He’s never the guy to show up and be like, ‘This is what you’re doing.’ He’s super approachable. He really wants us to find our spot in the sport.”

At Dartmouth, skiing wasn’t isolated from the rest of life—it was embedded within it. That integration became most visible during the most stressful week of the year: NCAAs, which overlap directly with finals.

“My freshman year, that finals week with NCAAs was kind of a dark time,” Lange said. “I was close to tears on the start line of the 20k race. Just so much pressure, so overwhelmed.”

He remembers warming up briefly, then stopping.

“I skied like fifteen minutes in the warm-up and just put my skis down,” he said. “I was completely broken.”

A kilometer into the race, he was in dead last.

And then something shifted.

“I saw Brayton on the side of the trail,” Lange said. “And I was like, you know—I don’t need to take this so seriously. I can show up, do my best at everything, and give 100 percent effort. If I do that, it’s gonna come through.”

It did. That race became one of his best of the season.

The things that make it lighter

The story of Dartmouth skiing is often told through tradition—green suits, first-years with mohawks, time trials. Lange points to different details.

There’s a sauna in the locker room.

“That’s a prime spot to get to know the team,” he said. “We rip this on all the time.”

There’s also life beyond skiing. Every non-freshman on the men’s team is in a fraternity. Lange lives in the Zeta Psi house with teammates and classmates—engineers, computer scientists, people whose lives orbit entirely different centers.

“I’m surrounded by a ton of people who have no clue what skiing means to me,” he said. “And that’s been a really huge part of being at Dartmouth.”

His best season, he said, came immediately after pledging.

“It taught me how to not put as much pressure on myself,” Lange said. “How to make this a sustainable thing that I could really enjoy.”

That balance—academic, athletic, social—isn’t accidental.

“None of the three would be as good without the others,” he said.

“You can’t live nervous”

Lange keeps a training log. He trains consistently. He admits he’s overcooked himself before. What he doesn’t do is chase numbers obsessively.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had an hour’s target that I’m trying to hit,” he said. “I’ve just trained for the enjoyment of it.”

There was a time, early on, when outside voices crept in.

“I was getting a lot of people saying, ‘You’re training too much. You’re doing this wrong,’” he said. “I got a little worked up about it and a little nervous.”

He paused.

“You can’t live nervous.”

It’s the line that keeps resurfacing, whether he’s talking about high school racing, college pressure, or the future beyond Dartmouth.

“I think anyone who’s in high school, middle school—just go out there because you enjoy it,” he said. “You’re gonna have crappy days. But if you go out there every day and just have a good time, and surround yourself with people you like to be around, things will work out.”

That philosophy shapes how he defines success now. Lange talks about team first. About racing in a green suit. About showing up energized.

“The guys here are here for the right reasons,” he said. “They’re skiing because they really enjoy skiing. That’s super energizing.”

A quiet kind of confidence

Ask Lange where he sees himself years down the road, and he doesn’t reach for outcomes. He talks about process.

“The process of showing up every day,” he said. “How can I be the best athlete I can be today? That’s the most rewarding thing.”

Skiing, he believes, has taught him how to live—how to work, how to recover, how to stay curious.

“Wherever I am fifteen years from now,” he said, “all of the lessons that I’ve learned are still going to be extremely relevant and important.”

For now, there are finals to finish and skis to pack. The snow will either come or it won’t. The races will sort themselves out.

Lange will keep doing what he’s learned to do best: show up, stay loose, and ski without fear.

Because speed, he’s learned, is hard to find when you’re holding your breath.

Love Stories Like This? Help Keep Them Coming.

Feature stories like this one take time, access, and care to produce. If you value thoughtful storytelling and independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a Voluntary Subscriber. Your support directly fuels the work we do to cover the people, places, and moments that make our sport special.

Join the FasterSkier community!