Canaan
Ford, a Plymouth N.H., native, Holderness School graduate and former U.S. Olympian, was named director of alpine skiing and assistant athletic director at Cardigan Mountain School earlier this month. She now has been tasked with expanding the school’s alpine program, recruiting some of the region’s best skiing talent and moving the all-boys boarding school in Canaan into the Olympic development spotlight.
It was the kind of opportunity Ford, 28, had been looking for, a chance to return to the comfortable environment of private school life while teaching competitive skiing at a high level on the East Coast.
“I want to grow the program,” Ford said in a phone interview earlier this month. “The team that’s been there, they’ve done a really great job. I know the boarding school world is pretty busy. I just want to come in, bring some energy … I want to boost the program and, essentially, get Cardigan on the map.
“It’s a big opportunity for them in the area, with the ski areas there are,” she added. “It’s the Mecca of winter.”
Ryan Frost, Cardigan’s athletic director, said an expansion of the alpine skiing program has always been the long-term plan. Ford’s Olympic pedigree, plus her East Coast ties, helped make that possible.
“We’ve had an alpine skiing program for a long time here at Cardigan,” Frost said earlier this month. “It’s been up and down at different times, but we’ve built a strong tradition of kids at U.S. Skiing and NEPSAC skiing. Based on our geographical location, our ability to get kids on the hill, to have two other seasons of sports with a well-rounded boarding school education, we believe we can offer a niche for student-athletes interested in alpine skiing.”
Cardigan, which supports grades 6-9, consistently has had about 22 student-athletes participate in alpine skiing on a yearly basis, Frost said, with about five to 10 of them with the competitive drive and talent to potentially compete with U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the U.S. national body for ski competition.
Frost said he’d like to see the number of strong, competitive skiers double under Ford’s guidance.
“Our ultimate goal is to have a consistent, core base of really strong, good kids, both solid students, solid citizens, strong NEPSAC skiers and strong USSA skiers,” Frost said. “We are looking for the program to be filled out and continue to bolster its numbers, where 20-plus kids every year say, ‘That’s my winter sport.’ ”
Ford is excited for the challenge.
She grew up in Plymouth and first started skiing at age 3. She attended Okemo Mountain School for middle school and Holderness for high school, playing varsity soccer and lacrosse while participating with the U.S. Development Team.
“I realized I liked (skiing) young,” said Ford, who graduated from Holderness in 2008. “I got the competitive bug when I was about 12. … I was really competitive in everything I did.
“At Holderness, I liked the three-sport model. I played soccer at a high level, did college camps for soccer and lacrosse. But the spring of my junior year, I was named to the U.S. Development Team. That’s when I chose.”
Her skiing career took off after high school. She was named Ski Racing magazine’s junior of the year in 2009, was the top women’s junior in slalom, giant slalom and downhill at the 2010 U.S. Championships and won back-to-back downhill titles at the 2011 and 2012 U.S. Championships. Ford’s accomplishments got her named to the 2014 U.S. Olympic team. She finished 24th overall in the slalom at Sochi, Russia.
“It was incredible,” Ford said of her Olympics experience. “It was an accumulation of all that hard work. … There’s something about Olympic spirit; people talk about it, but I never really knew what they meant. It was surreal. I couldn’t believe I was there.”
Ford worked at GroundSwell Athletics, an education-based athletics program in Utah that offers highly competitive collegiate skiers a chance to compete while pursuing both an education and professional postgraduate opportunities, for the last two years. She said the opportunity at Cardigan was the right position at the right time.
“(Ford) is coming in with a wealth of knowledge and experience,” Frost said. “She grew up in a boarding school at Holderness. She knows how these places work. Skiing at high levels on the U.S. team, then at the Olympics, there’s some cachet to her name. We’re hoping that will help attract and promote the program.”
Ford’s biggest challenge might be persuading a broader pool of developing skiers to come east.
“The weather is tough,” Ford admitted. “For kids out west, it’s tough to show them that the East isn’t bad. … But I think it enables you to become a better skier. If you can ski on hard snow, you can ski on anything. As challenging as the East is weather-wise, it definitely makes you tough. It’s up to us to teach that it’ll help them. It usually does, and it will.”
Ford started full-time at Cardigan on Aug. 1 and also will serve as the school’s assistant athletic director and the head coach of its boys soccer team.
“Throughout my skiing career, I’ve always been goal-oriented. Upon retirement, my new goal was one that I felt would motivate me,” she said. “That age group is such a crucial age for development. It’s really where you can teach strong skiing fundamentals and have big impact on a person’s character and values. It’s an exciting challenge.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.