A ski jumping revival mission is alive in New Hampshire

Ski jumping is a sport advocates are trying to keep alive. (Alan MacRae/Nansen Ski Club)

It’s the heart of ski jumping season in New England where, weather permitting, events for a wide range of experience levels are scheduled at hills across the region, including the upcoming interscholastic championship meet in New Hampshire, the only state in the country that still sanctions high school ski jumping.

Those who have been around the sport for a bit know that the ski jumping scene in New England, like the very activity itself, has been an up-and-down experience.

While there is hope that a resurgence in the sport is underway again, one thing is certain — its success is a credit to the passion and hard work of dedicated community members.

Longtime Hanover High coach Tom Dodds and his Bears ski jumping team are now the three-time defending state champions after claiming the most recent title just last week. As they looked forward to the NHIAA championship meet hosted by Kennett High at the Kancamagus Highway jump hill named after their own coach, Chip Henry, on Feb. 24, Dodds reflected on the cyclical nature of the sport. He recalled first seeing ski jumping as a kid during the 1960s at the Dartmouth Winter Carnival. This was a period when the sport was at one of its peaks in popularity.

“Dartmouth had a jump right in the middle of town that was set up completely on a trestle, kind of like the Nansen jump in Berlin,” Dodds said. “You drive up and you see this massive structure up in the air right in town on the golf course and they would get thousands of students out to the jump every winter carnival. That’s kind of where I got intrigued by the sport and decided to give it a try.”

Most who want to learn the sport do so at the Ford Sayre ski program, the local club which is a hidden gem in the Upper Valley, Dodds said. “Literally, 500 kids a year are enrolled in the various Ford Sayre programs in alpine, nordic and ski jumping. It’s an incredible program and has been for many decades.”

It wasn’t long after Dodds graduated from Williams College in 1979 that ski jumping hit one of its lows when the NCAA voted to drop competition in the sport in 1980. “It was also around that point when a lot of states dropped interscholastic ski jumping and shifting everything toward clubs,” Dodds said.

New Hampshire’s unique interscholastic jumping program, while still secondary to the robust club offerings in the state, offers exposure to students who ordinarily wouldn’t have the chance to learn how to ski jump elsewhere.

“It’s pretty remarkable how much kids who actually don’t start until eighth or ninth grade can pick up in ski jumping,” Dodds said. “And it’s not just their physical ability to jump, there’s also an amazing mental growth you see in these athletes. I think that’s what keeps us coaches going is seeing the excitement in these athletes that we develop as first-time ski jumpers alongside the jumpers we’ve got that come up through the club system.”

Clubs continue to be the biggest feeder for ski jumpers and expose the most people to the sport. In addition to Ford Sayre, clubs in the state that are thriving include Mount Washington Valley Ski Club, Harris Hill Club, Andover Outing Club, Lebanon Outing Club, Salisbury Winter Sports Association and the oldest ski club in America — Nansen.

Founded in Berlin in the late 1800s as “Skiklubbin,” the construction of numerous ski jumps followed for many decades at what would become Nansen Ski Club, including “The Big Nansen” in 1935, the largest jump in North America for half a century at 171 feet tall. At its peak, some 25,000 spectators attended Olympic qualifying competition there for the 1940 Games, and Big Nansen went on to host the U.S. Ski Jumping Championships in 1957, 1965 and 1972.

Big Nansen fell into disrepair in the 1980s and after three decades, efforts to restore the big jump are currently underway. Two smaller jumps on the site, “The Little Nansen” and “The Li’l Nansen” continue to host jumping competitions. All in all, the sport is trending up again.

“In the last few years there’s been tremendous growth in the North Country with Chip Henry and Liz Garland setting up the Mount Washington Valley Ski Club,” Dodds said. “They’re starting to get a lot of engagement. And the group up at Nansen that resurrected that hill. We’re all kind of excited about what we’re seeing.”

Dodds said he’s hopeful that expanded snowmaking and the installation of metal tracks like Proctor Academy installed in Hanover will keep jumps open through more adverse weather and, subsequently, keep kids engaged in the sport.

“It really is a very local, driven effort depending on the community,” Dodds said. “You find old ski jumpers who sort of come back to the sport and start putting in time and start to kind of generate enthusiasm and excitement for ski jumping. And you see those programs grow. You definitely see that happening across the state of New Hampshire.