Where does Milton ski, and what is the emphasis?
The Ski Team trains at Blue Hill, which is about ten to fifteen minutes from campus. The main (race) hill is short (officially 360 vertical feet), but has a good pitch for slalom training and adequate length to train giant slalom. Extensive snow-making has ensured that we started skiing in December each of the past two seasons. Milton trains four days a week, once in the early morning (gs top to bottom), once at night (slalom, top to bottom) and twice in the afternoon. All our races are held on Wednesdays at Nashoba Valley, and are against other ISL schools. The team has also participated in the New England Class ‘B’ championship races each of the past three years, bringing home three championship plates and a second place.

The team focuses on providing coaching and training that will challenge the experienced racer while at the same time providing for the development of skiers who are new to racing. Approximately 75% of the team learns to race with Milton’s program on Blue Hill. The remaining 25% work on honing skills learned from their participation in weekend race training. In recent years many on the team have taken advantage of summer training opportunities on Mt. Hood, Oregon. To be on the race team at Milton you do not need to have raced previously. On the other hand the program has, in recent years, provided coaching and development to several FIS skiers, who continue to race on the weekends while training with Milton and benefiting from a first-rate educational environment. The focus of our training is to try to provide each skier with training drills and coaching that will help that skier develop in both technique and confidence.

What is the Ski Team’s history?
Skiing became a varsity sport at Milton in 1970, and since 1980 has fielded boys’ and girls’ teams at both varsity and JV levels. The girls’ team was New England Class B champions in 2002, as well as ISL champions. The boys’ team has won the ISL championship for the past three years, and won the New England Class B Championship in 2001 and 2002.

The girls’ team is coming off a strong third place finish in the ISL last year, despite losing its two best skiers for most of the season. The boys’ team is seeking to defend its ISL championship and to improve on its second place finish at last year’s New England Championship. Both teams are returning some strong seniors who are capable of placing in the top five in any event. In addition each team has a number of younger skiers who are expected to move up quickly in the rankings. The boys and girls JV teams both were at the top of the ISL rankings last year, and should continue to provide a steady stream of developing racers to take the place of graduating seniors.