Prep School's Ski Academy Turns Out Some of the Best
By Hannah Wolfson
Associated Press
April 1999

(This Associated Press article appeared in several newspapers nationwide in the Spring, 1999.)

SALT LAKE CITY - When the lunch bell rings at Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School, two dozen teens grab a quick bite and slip down to a semidark basement. They grab their stuff and head out - to go skiing.

The kids aren't playing hooky. In fact, they get a lift to Park City's slopes in a school van, and their coaches go with them. They're the 25 students who make up Rowmark Ski Academy, a school within a school that has produced some of the country's best skiers.

It's easy to tell Rowmark is more than just a prep school ski team. A photo of alumna Kristi Terzian celebrating one of her two world championship wins hangs in the program office; graduate Hillary Lindh, a world downhill champion and silver medallist at the 1992 Olympics, comes back occasionally to visit and talk with students. And down in that dim basement, racks marked with each student's name line the walls, each loaded with several pairs of skis. Two tune-up benches, a boot-drying rack, and a storeroom of extra equipment attest to the weight skiing carries here.

"It has to be your number one priority," said senior Michael Wilcox. That means spending mornings in classes and afternoons on the mountain, sometimes until dark. There are races against other academies or ski clubs, which can be a week long and a day's drive away. Homework comes late at night after workouts, and there are piles of makeup work after competitions.

"There's a lot of training, a lot of travel, long drives to Jackson Hole (Wyo.) and Sun Valley (Idaho)," said administrative director Dave Hall.

And that's just the winter term, which the kids call the fun part. Fall means aerobic conditioning and weight workouts five days a week, and many students attend the academy's ski camps in British Columbia each summer.

"It's hard work," said senior Thomas Jackson of Chicago, who has been racing since he was 6 and is now in his fourth year at Rowmark. "It's like basketball practice- you have to do drills." But students say the rigid schedule, much like what young figure skaters or gymnasts go through, pays off when it comes to racing.

"It worked really well for me," said Lindh, who retired in 1997 after 13 years on the national team and is now studying at the University of Utah. She said the balance of academics and training - and coaches who taught her to think for herself - helped her withstand the pressure of international racing.

In addition to skiing, there is heavy emphasis on nutrition, off-the-slopes workouts and attitude. Sports psychologists and weight trainers are brought in to work with students.

"We try to be a little oasis in the most important fields related to alpine ski racing," said program director Olle Larssen, who has been with the academy since it started in 1982. "We have an affiliation with people who I think are the best."

This season, two Rowmark seniors spent time abroad with the U.S. Ski Team in a program to acquaint the country's top junior skiers with European racing. One of them and another student have qualified for U.S. Nationals and two for Canadian Nationals. Nine others qualified for the Junior Olympics. And the roster of former students includes Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, current U.S. slalom and giant slalom champion Alex Schaffer, and international ski racers like Jeff Durand of Canada, Gota Buir of Japan and Ovidio Garcia of Spain.

These bona fides lure students from across the country and overseas. Administrators say Rowmark differs from other American ski academies because it is part of a 980-student school with a full array of academic and extracurricular activities. Most of the ski schools clustered in the Northeast have fewer than 100 students and focus on skiing.

But there's a hefty price tag for Rowmark's combination of ski training and intense, prep-school academics. Tuition, room and board at Rowland Hall - St Mark's costs about $17,000 a year for out-of-state students. Rowmark's fees are another $6,200, plus equipment, travel and summer camps (Note: these are 1999 figures.) Administrators say there is plenty of financial aid, plus a new scholarship coming next year from the family of Norwegian ski legend Stein Eriksen, a longtime Utah resident.

And parents and students say it's worth it. At least a couple of this year's students, who wrapped up their season April 17 with the Eagle Classic at Snowbird, dream of skiing for America during the 2002 Winter Games in Utah.

Rowmark Provides Skiing Teens
The Best of Both Worlds in School
By Wina Sturgeon
The Salt Lake Tribune
January 1997

If a ski racer wants to rise to the Olympic level today, attendance at a ski academy is almost mandatory. The amount of conditioning training and competing needed to become a world class ski athlete leaves little time for other pursuits - such as education.

That's why a high school that revolves around ski racing is important. Most ski academies are in the eastern United States. But one of the most famous is Salt Lake City's Rowmark Ski Academy, part of the Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School.

Experts predict that some of Rowmark's current students may be gracing the Olympic podiums in 2002, just as others have won medals in previous Olympics, Hilary Lindh is a graduate, and so are Kristi Terzian, Japan's Gota Miura and Spain's Ovideo Garcia. Even Picabo Street was a student for a year.

Robert Saunders, 15, is one of the current students. Last year, he was the Western region champion in his age group in giant slalom, and was third in slalom. Like his racer classmates, he gets up weekdays at 7 a.m. and starts school at 8. By 11:45, classes in history, English, chemistry and math have been completed. After a quick lunch, he is in the van with other Rowmark racers, heading up to the race hill at Park City to train. They will ski until about 4 p.m., then spend at least three hours completing their homework. The routine allows little time for a social life.

"I don't mind that; I kind of like it," says Saunders. "I love this sport more than anything, and it's pretty much my life."

His feelings are echoed by 15-year-old Jason Foster, who came from Sacramento, California, to attend Rowmark. Rowland Hall arranged for him to live with another family while attending the school.

"Back in California, I had to travel two hours into the mountains every single weekend to ski," he says. "All my friends and my competition lived in Lake Tahoe, and they skied every day. I was keeping up with them pretty good, but I figured that if I could ski every day, I could 'up' my status on them. So when I heard about Rowmark, where everything revolves around skiing, I thought it was great. And so far, it's been wonderful.

While the average enrollment at most ski academies ranges between 80 and 100 racers, Rowmark never has more than 25. They are well integrated into the 300 or so high school pupils at Rowland Hall, founded in 1880.

Carl Sturges, principal of Rowland Hall's grades 9-12, says that the high school athletes are given no breaks, just because they spend less time in the classroom. "They're expected to do the same work that the kids in the other classes do." He adds, "It takes a lot of work on the part of individual teachers to help the Rowmark kids. If they miss one or two weeks from classes because of competition schedules, they have to have help to make it up. Ultimately, the primary concern is academics."

Academic standards are so high among Rowmarkers that they have no trouble being accepted to Ivy League colleges.

Rowmark was started in 1982 because co-founder Carl Kjeldsberg had two daughters who wanted to attend a ski academy, and he didn't want them to travel east. The other co-founder, Olle Larsson, is the soul of Rowmark. Larsson is a legend in the sport. He is considered one of the ultimate authorities on racing technique, but that's not why he's famous. The 51-year-old native of Sweden, who speaks four languages, is known for coming up with unusual, and memorable ways of making good racers great.

"Olle is probably the best coach I've ever had," Saunders says. "He comes up with little inventions to help your skiing, like the 'tire', which is a piece of styrofoam that goes around one of your legs to show how far apart your legs are when you ski."

During a World Cup race in November, Larsson took 2,100 photos of the international field of racers, analyzing each one. Recently, when he heard that a World Cup giant slalom race in France had been won by the phenomenal margin of two seconds, he spent hours on the phone finding out what the snow conditions were, and what kind of skis and wax the winning racer had used.

Such coaching doesn't come cheap. Basic tuition at Rowland Hall is $8,500 for Utahns, and Rowmark costs another $5,000. Out-of-state skiers pay $18,000 for a year at Rowmark. (Note: these are 1997 figures.) Private donors provide enough aid that no student selected for the school is turned down for financial reasons.

"It takes a lot of dedication and hard work, but it's also really fun," says 17-year-old Jessica Lyle, who came from Aspen, Colorado. "The teachers can tell when you're stressed or can't handle all the work, and they will help you so you don't get to the end of your rope."

Lyle says the Rowmark experience helps students mature quickly, and principal Sturges agrees. "Rowmark kids tend to be much better organized than average high school students," he says. "In fact, their grades actually go up during ski season just because they're so organized. Remember, you're talking about kids with a lot of motivation."

Terzian looks back fondly on her Rowmark days, "It was wonderful, because it was like going to a regular high school and interacting with regular students that weren't necessarily athletes, so it was the best of both academic and racing worlds."

Terzian, who owns several outdoor coffee shops, adds, "It certainly equipped me for the rest of my life outside skiing."