Boston College ski team has reason to shine this season

BC’s Zachary Simmons races the giant slalom at Mittersill during the 2021 NCAA championships in Franconia, N.H. (Getty Images)

In 2018, the Boston College ski team qualified its first athlete in program history for NCAA nationals. Things have progressed quite a bit since.

Over the past four seasons, BC’s ski team has sent seven more athletes to NCAA nationals. Last season, the Eagles even qualified their first freshman, Chiara Maria Ferrari, for the NCAA championship in Park City, Utah.

Ferrari, who earned a 27th-place finish in her NCAA skiing championship debut, also finished seventh overall in giant slalom at the Middlebury Carnival. She was only the third Eagle, male or female, to earn a bid during a season in which all Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association schools competed. 

The fact that Ferrari is returning for the 2023 season is one reason for the Eagles to be excited about this upcoming campaign. The other reason is the $1.25 million gift the school received in July from 1971 graduate James Maher, a donation made in order to endow a full-time head coaching position for the BC skiing program. 

Maher, a former captain of the BC ski team, graduated from the Carroll School of Management in 1971. He has four children who are avid skiers, including Elizabeth Daniels, who graduated from BC in 2002. 

“As a BC graduate and former captain of the ski team, as well as the parent of a former skiing student-athlete, I am very proud and honored to be able to endow the ski head coaching position,” Maher said. “I hope this gift continues to help advance BC’s ski program and I look forward to following the team in the years to come as it builds on the tremendous momentum of the last few seasons.”

Taking the charge on that momentum this season will be new head coach Alex Norden, who arrived at Chestnut Hill after two seasons as the head women’s Alpine ski coach at Gould Academy, in Bethel, Maine, and four seasons as the head Alpine ski coach at Brown University. A native of North Conway, N.H., she was a two-time United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association (USCSA) MacConnell Division Coach of the Year and coached five USCSA All-Americans during her time at Brown from 2016-20. Prior to Brown, Norden was head alpine coach at New England College, where she reinstated the program to varsity status in 2016. She also spent three years as a graduate assistant and strength and conditioning coach for the Alpine team at St. Lawrence University, where she earned her master’s degree in education leadership.

Norden was a four-year member of the University of New Hampshire Alpine team, serving as captain in 2009 and earning NCAA All-Academic honors. She also competed with the UNH track and field team and graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in sports studies. After graduation, she served two years as the U-19 women’s ski coach at Killington Mountain School in Vermont. 

“I think that it’s a really exciting time for BC to endow a head coaching position,” Norden said. “To have the ability to have a full-time head coach is something that’s much-needed, especially when competing at the highest level and EISA (Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association).” 

With BC, Norden joins a program looking to double down on recent success, a situation she lost at Brown when school officials cut the women’s ski team in 2020. With the Eagles, she will be coaching both varsity men and women competing in EISA, which is the highest level in the East.

Preparing for the season, which begins in January, Norden likes what she see from her team ( a total of 25 men and women) thus far. “What’s nice about being Division 1 is that I can start working with my athletes as soon as they get on campus,” Norden said. “So we talked about performance goals. And then we also talked about how to achieve those performance goals with what they need to change technically and tactically. 

“Typically, aside from Dartmouth, most teams have one head coach. We have a full-time grad assistant, Francesco Gori, who competed on the Italian national team and is working on his master’s degree in finance. I think we’ll continue to attract pretty high-level skiers just getting off of the circuit that want to come to Boston College and coach and get their master’s, too.” 

Norden figures there to be a lot of draws to Boston College that she can use in the recruiting process. 

“I think my recruiting strategy is developing a relationship within NCAA rules with student-athletes before they come to BC,” she said. Her goal within the next two-to-three years is to have a roster of eight-to-nine men and eight-to nine women. She also said she is looking for student-athletes to come in and make a stamp on the program right away. 

“It really begins at the academy level,” she said. “A lot of high-level, dedicated ski racers come from academies. I’m also equally looking for student-athletes who will come in and represent us well in the classroom and the Boston community. We take a lot of pride in our our men’s team right now as the highest GPA in athletics.” 

The ski team will begin the spring semester with a January camp at Sugarbush before beginning classes on Jan. 17. Once school begins, the team will train at New Hampshire’s Mittersill on Mondays, locally at Blue Hills Ski Area on Tuesdays, and Proctor Academy, also in New Hampshire, on Wednesdays. 

Ferrari finished the 2022 season ranked 16th in EISA giant slalom. Fellow teammates Lauren Hunter and Morgan Ellis, as well as men’s skiers Matthew Smallhouse, Zachary Simmons, Ben Charleston and William Kornya, all contributed points to the Eagles’ team total.

Last season, eight members of the team — Charleston, Ferrari, Kornya, Gigi Kranjc, Andrew Rusis, Simmons, Smallhouse and Sophia Staudenmayer — were named to the National Collegiate All-Academic Ski Team by the United States Collegiate Ski Coaches Association.

Captains Kornya and Staudenmayer along with Kranjc made the team for the third straight year. In order to receive the honor, skiers must have a 3.5 cumulative grade-point average, matching the highest GPA requirement of any coaches association academic team nationally, and must participate at the EISA Championships.