Since the 1940s and 1950s when all students were required to ski during the winter months, Proctor Academy’s identity has been rooted in snow sports. Today, the school is proud to announce that U.S. Ski & Snowboard has named Proctor Academy a Gold-certified club, the highest honor granted by U.S. Ski & Snowboard.
While it was ninety degrees and sunny in Andover, New Hampshire yesterday, the ski season never truly stops for Proctors USS/FIS ski program. Over the past two weeks, twenty-three athletes and four coaches traveled to Saas Fee, Switzerland for an intensive training and team bonding experience, all while immersing themselves in European culture.
Proctor’s USS/FIS ski team traveled to Mount Hood, Oregon for their annual June training camp. The first of three pre-season training camps provided by coaches, the ten day Mount Hood camp affords students the opportunity to get on snow and work fundamental drills and skill development.
When you choose to live in northern New England, you can either complain about the winter weather, or embrace. At Proctor, we choose to embrace it. With over half of our school (more than 190 students) on snow each winter, Proctor’s love for snow sports remains as deep as it has for almost a century.
As the snow guns blaze at the Proctor Ski Area in anticipation of our students returning to campus, Proctor’s USS/FIS Eastern Ski program continues their two week training camp at Panorama Resort in Panorama, British Columbia.
When you love snow, you do just about anything you can to find it. Proctor’s USS/FIS Ski program engages in annual pre-season training camps around the globe, and this August found a group of U16 and U19 boys traveling to Saas-Fee, Switzerland for two weeks of training. The relentless pursuit of training opportunities for athletes has yielded remarkable results on the hill each winter, but the on-snow training is just a small piece of the overall experience afforded these students. Team bonding, dry land training, and cultural immersion are equally important to why our coaches, Athletics Department, and parents support these ventures. Read more from the coaches and students in Saas-Fee below.
Temperatures on campus over the last three days hit 90 degrees with a humidity percentage matching that of a tropical rainforest. The thought of skiing or spending time on snow was about as far from our minds as possible. But that was not the case for the 18 USSA/FIS athletes and four coaches spending ten days training on Mount Hood in Oregon right now.
It’s part of who we are, part of our history, part of what we move forward. Scraps of the history can be found in the woods behind the football field, a wheel nailed to a maple tree signals the old rope tow. Stories swirl of slope improvement that involve students, dynamite, and a granite stater do-it-yourself mentality. Every institution has legacy, tradition, and it’s important in the current hustle to evolve and to become the new next, legacy is not forgotten. And yet sometimes legacy has to justify itself, and sometimes in the exploration of legacy institutional values are revealed. And that can be a steadying.
