Hitting the slopes with Princeton's fastest team

The 'fastest team at Princeton' was at the Tremblant Ski Resort in Canada over intersession for training camp. That would be the University's ski team, which, despite not being a varsity team, certainly holds the title for the highest-velocity Tiger squad.

Since the team is officially a club sport, they don't receive enough funding to hire their own coaches or trainers. As such, the trip to Tremblant is – for most team members – the only opportunity to receive advice from coaches who are actually experts in ski racing.

That's not to say the team doesn't know their way around the slopes.

Some members, such as junior team president Alex Smith and fellow senior team captain Ned Rosenman, have been racing their entire lives. Smith grew up in Lake Placid, N.Y., a mecca for winter sports, and raced from early childhood up until his junior year in high school for both school teams and non-scholastic events.

While team members have received varying degrees of formal ski race training prior to skiing at Princeton, most members are merely skiing enthusiasts who wished to try their hands at racing. As a result of these diverse skill levels, the atmosphere on the team is enthusiastic but relaxed.

"We all very much want to do well, but most of us who are skiing pretty well once skied a lot better, so we're kind of washed up and not as competitive as we once were," Smith said.

As Smith explains, the team is an interesting amalgam; part club team, part NCAA Division III varsity team. It's a club team in the sense that it takes on all levels of skiers and is not recognized as a varsity team by the University. However, the team is also a member of the US Collegiate Ski Association (USCSA), a Division III conference that feeds its best teams onto the national level.

The team attends USCSA hosted events at resorts in eastern Pennsylvania and New York nearly every weekend in the winter months. All member schools in Princeton's racing league – all eight of them – attend each race. The league is comprised of teams from around the Mid-Atlantic.

Given the lack of varsity status, it is somewhat unexpected that the women's team has been extremely successful over the last few years. Three years ago they qualified for the national championships in Sun Valley, Id., and have placed consistently at the top of the standings at the USCSA races since then. Recently, however, the Tigers lost several excellent athletes to graduation, and now are a very young team.

"The women's ski team is rebuilding," Smith said.

Junior Alex Copos is doing her best to lead the team back to its former glory. Copos, a Romanian citizen, has been skiing on local mountains in her home country since she was three.

"Romania is developing very quickly now," said Copos. "We have a lot of tourists and the slopes have improved a lot."

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Copos is hoping to bring a similar improvement to the skill level of the women's team. She has looked to fellow veteran racers as well as some talented freshmen to bring the women's squad back to its previous level of excellence.

The men's team has received only a fraction of the national attention of the women's team, but can be very competitive against teams at the regional level, where it is not uncommon for Rosenman and Smith to finish on the podium. But for these athletes a podium finish is often just a nice perk of their main objective: having a good time.

That attitude is best suited for the Tigers given the composition of the team. A fair share of the club's athletes is comfortable with skiing but not with ski racing. The seasoned members of the team try to keep the team morale high and remind everyone it's about having fun. Every now and then, even the 'fastest team at Princeton' needs to slow things down a bit.