Skiing

Balance your time on snow and in the classroom with the ski academy atmosphere of Northwood School. With our high-quality curriculum and athletic opportunities, you don’t need to choose between your passion for sports and your desire for excellent college-preparatory education — you can have both.

 

Whether you’re interested in alpine racing or Nordic disciplines, you can find the support you need as a student-athlete to fulfill your passion for excellence in sport and academics. Our leadership team and partners have fulfilled Olympic dreams, and Northwood School can be your foundation for greatness. As we say, it is “where possible happen.”

 

 

What Sets Us Apart:

At Northwood School, we attract students from all over the country and from many parts of the world. Our diverse population of student-athletes enjoys the following benefits:

 

• Olympic and alpine industry experience and leadership from Tommy Biesemeyer, Director of Skiing
• Relationship with New York State Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF), a “Gold Certified Club”
• 85-acre campus in the world-renowned Olympic destination of Lake Placid
• Located minutes from Whiteface Mountain, the Lake Placid Olympic Jumping Complex, and Mt. Van Hoevenberg
• Private school education with advanced curriculum and place-based learning
• Outdoor programming to experience the Adirondack Mountain wilderness
• Winter schedule, academic tutors at camps, and technology platform to support travel
• Strength and conditioning coaches and on-site technician and tuning facility with a Wintersteiger machine
• College counseling and placement to select schools for skiing
• Student and alumni achievements at the top level of sport to professional careers

Olympic Experienced Leadership

Northwood’s Director of Skiing, Tommy Biesemeyer, joined Northwood after a storied 12-year professional racing career, highlighted by representing Team USA at the 2018 Olympics. A resident of Keene, New York, and known within the ski community as “B.Z.,” Biesemeyer began skiing at the age of three and had his first race at age seven when he joined the NYSEF program at Whiteface Mountain. At 12, Biesemeyer competed in J3 and J4 races but always had sights set on the U.S. Ski Team. A victory at the ’03 Junior Olympics started him down that path, and he then made his World Cup debut in 2010 and the Olympic Team in 2018.

 

 

Relationship with NYSEF

Northwood School and New York Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF) have a long-standing relationship. The Northwood student-athletes in alpine, ski jumping, and Nordic are all members of NYSEF. Recognized as a “Gold Certified Club” by the US Ski & Snowboard, NYSEF is one of the organization’s original eight Gold Club members, and the group has been a leader in snowsport education for nearly 50 years. Student-athletes train and compete in the Olympic region within the NYSEF program pursuing academic options at Northwood School. Many of our student-athletes migrate from NYSEF’s Winter Term program and enroll in Northwood School, and then transition to NYSEF’s PG program to continue to further their athletic career.

 

Through our partnership with NYSEF, we share experienced coaching staff and work together on dryland programs and on-snow training camps. NYSEF also provides student-athletes with lodge facilities and training opportunities at the venues in partnership with the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA).

 

World-Class Venues

As host to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, Lake Placid built and maintained Olympic winter venues for forty years. Currently, many of the Olympic venues are receiving modernization in anticipation of the World University Games in January 2023. The exceptional venues that our student-athletes train and compete at include:

 

• Whiteface Mountain, the greatest vertical drop in the East is ten minutes from the Northwood School campus
• New refrigerated inrun tracks at the Lake Placid Ski Jumping Complex, allowing for student-athletes e to train on iced tracks in conditions up to 50 degrees – even on warm winter days, competition, and training sessions will continue as planned.
• The nordic center at Mt. Van Hoevenberg has the best snowmaking in all of North America with its newly expanded snowmaking abilities. The venue can cover 5km of trails in 3-4 days – allowing for training to begin as early as October.
• Take advantage of the new biathlon stadium at Mt. Van Hoevenberg which includes a 30-row biathlon shooting range – making the venue equipped to host the world’s largest biathlon and cross-country ski races in the world.
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Athletes from all over the world come to these venues to train and compete providing the opportunity for our student-athletes to train alongside development and national teams members like the US Biathlon Association (USBA), USA Nordic, and the US Ski Team.

 

Year-Round Intensive Training

To help our student-athletes advance in their ski discipline, we give them access to world-class training camps around the world and dryland training blocks on campus. As a day or boarding school student at Northwood, you can enjoy the following:

 

• On-snow summer training camps in Oregon, Europe, and the Southern Hemisphere
• Dryland fall training blocks at the Northwood School campus
• On-snow training trips to Austria in October
• On-snow training trips to Colorado in November
• On-snow winter training at Whiteface Mountain an Olympic mountain and the site of championships such as the Nor-Am Cup, NCAA, USCSA, U.S. Nationals, and U16 Nationals

During the fall, you also have the opportunity to diversify by joining other co-curricular activities on our campus in Lake Placid.

 

 

Balancing Progress on Snow and in the Classroom

The staff at Northwood work closely with our student-athletes to help balance their athletic career and academic success. NYSEF coaches help athletes cultivate their potential on snow, while teachers help to support their academic progress during training camps and throughout the competitive season.

 

At Northwood, our student-athletes enjoy a demanding training environment that is also fun, inclusive, and supportive. To foster the success of our student-athletes, we expect commitment, responsibility, and dedication at all levels both in coursework and training.

 

Alumni Achievements and College Placement

Skiing at Northwood has had a tradition of outstanding achievement since 1950. Northwood Ski Team graduates have competed at the national collegiate level, raced in the World Cup as U.S. Ski Team members and other countries, and represented their nations in several Winter Olympics. Northwood Ski Alumni have also continued their education at distinguished universities such as Bates, Boston College, Colby, Colorado, Dartmouth, Denver, Harvard, McGill, Middlebury, Plymouth State, St. Lawrence, UNH, UVM, and others.

 

Notable alumni performing at the top level of the sport:

 

• Andrew Weibrecht ’03 (USA), two-time Olympic medalist & five-time top-5 World Cup finisher in 2016

• Kevin Drury ’06 (CAN), currently ranked 1st in the world in Ski-Cross

• Sarah Bennett ’19, 2022 Canadian National Ski Team, 2020-21 CAST NextGen Program Recognized Athletes, Ski Québec Alpin

   

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Ready to learn more about how Northwood School can help you achieve your personal, educational, and athletic goals?

 

Contact Elenor to schedule a tour or speak with an admission specialist.

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2023 / 2024 Northwood Ski Team

 

	Alpine U16 Girls
	Name	Grade	Country	Discipline
	Anja Robertson	10	USA	Alpine
	Alpine U18 Girls
	Julianne Brochu	11	CAN	Alpine
	Maegan Byrne	12	USA	Alpine
	Elisabeth Creighton	12	CAN	Alpine
	Cara Dempsey	11	USA	Alpine
	Arielle Haccoun Choquette	12	USA	Alpine
	Cecilia Keller	11	USA	Alpine
	Sydney Kuder	11	USA	Alpine
	Lea Lambert	12	CAN	Alpine
	Olivia Levesque	12	CAN	Alpine
	Elleanore Pelletier	11	CAN	Alpine
	Caroline Purcell	12	USA	Alpine
	Sophia Schupp	12	USA	Alpine
	Teegan Wardlaw	11	USA	Alpine
	Alpine U16 Boys
	Jackson Magnus	10	USA	Alpine
	Hudson Marshall	9	CAN	Alpine
	Marcos Alvarez Barrios	10	SPAIN	Alpine
	Mikey Mezzetti	10	USA	Alpine
	Liam McGahay	9	USA	Alpine
	Lucas Smith	10	USA	Alpine
	Alpine U18 Boys
	Edouard Brochu	12	CAN	Alpine
	Aston Ferrillo	10	USA	Alpine
	Charles Leduc	11	CAN	Alpine
	Sam Rudy	12	USA	Alpine
	Luke Salibello	11	USA	Alpine
	Cole Van Etten	11	USA	Alpine
	Wyatt Wardlaw	12	USA	Alpine
	Zach Wargo	11	USA	Alpine
	Justin Zeng	PG	CHN	Alpine
	Nordic
	Jack Kroll	11	USA	Nordic
	Daven Linck	11	USA	Nordic
	Mitchell Penning	11	CAN	Nordic
	Abigail Van Dorn	11	USA	Nordic
	Freestyle
	Clayton Fuller	11	USA	Freestyle
	Kenneth Guchinskiy	10	USA	Freestyle
	Max Hyman	11	USA	Freestyle
	Josef Spear	10	USA	Freestyle