Slugger66So did we ever get an answer on what the end goal is for freeskiers attending these schools? They can't even leverage their skills for college admissions since no college freeskiing teams actively recruit or dole out scholarships. That's the common justification for racers and XC skiers.
There's also legitimately zero opportunity from a career standpoint. It's well established that freeskiers make no money outside of a select few. Why would a presumably well-educated, successful family consider it a viable option for their kid? The only exception might apply to families with fuck you money where long-term career prospects don't matter.
Hey! I can't pretend to speak for every kid who ends up at a mountain school or for every parent that shells out the cash for it, but here is what my personal experience (attended 2 different mountain schools on the east coast) taught me.
1) Only a relatively small number of kids are paying the listed tuition: many of the kids who attended either ski school that I went to were faculty kids, their parents were teachers, coaches, dorm heads... etc, and a lot of the other kids were on some form of financial aid or scholarship.
2) Some mountain schools may be less academically rigorous than an average public school (lowkey debatable), but they are nearly universally easier to leverage into a college acceptance, small graduating classes mean you likely are not competing with anyone else from your school for admission into a good college, and the school budgets often allow for independent college counseling that is far more personal, and far more effective than offered by any public school.
3) Most kids (in freestyle programs) know they don't have a future in professional skiing, and understand that there isn't really money in it, but they just really love skiing, and they have the privilege to afford to do what they love without dropping out of school. There are a lot of kids in the race programs (and moguls tbh) who are looking for a direct transition into the US ski team and worldcup competition world, where athletes do get paid a little eventually.
4) Honestly this is the most important thing: Most kids in freestyle programs at mountain schools were not able to thrive in a traditional academic setting, they just needed extra supports and alternative attitudes about education, they wanted to ski more than they wanted to go to school, and their parents had the resources to give them an alternative to dropping out.
tldr: Kids end up in ski school because their parents work there, their parents have the resources to support their love of skiing, they offer a better education than the public school in a mountain town, they couldn't succeed in traditional school, and a whole host of other reasons.
I understand (and in some cases support) hating on academy kids, but its a whole different world on the inside, it certainly isn't all endless money and privilege, there's honestly an insane amount of drug abuse, bullying, and mental health crises that occur under the radar in these places.
