Dwight, the ski-school director, barrel-chested and mustachioed, stood at the front of the old ski lodge, thanked us all for participating, and finally said tersely: “The names are on the wall.”
At first none of us assembled at our picnic tables moved. Then everyone stood and moved, nearly silently, to the list of who had been hired to teach that season.
I stared at the list in ballooning disbelief.
I looked again. My name was really not on it. Beside me, Peter, a fine skier with whom I sometimes carpooled, turned away stony-faced. It was his second year trying.
I won’t exactly say I chose my college because it had a ski area, but I can’t say I didn’t. I did know that Middlebury College had an excellent English department, which I later appreciated. Meanwhile I happily took the train to Vermont, while my parents, in Maryland, heaved a sigh of relief that I hadn’t yet found out about the West.
I started skiing at 13 and loved it; had never raced, and had no prayer of making Midd’s ski team.
At a party early on, I heard a guy say of the college’s Snow Bowl ski area, “I wanted to make ski patrol so much, I could taste it.” (He succeeded.)
Working at the Bowl meant involvement, a ski pass. A signature parka. Having taught other sports, I aimed for ski school, and that entailed staying at school over Christmas break, finding accommodations and spending two days at the hiring clinic.
Someone from staff told me afterwards that I had been one of the last two cut and advised me to hang around at the Bowl, become familiar, ski with the instructors.
I was willing. But I also privately absorbed a semi-public disappointment, a loss of a potential community. This was probably the first time in my then-teen life when hard work, and trying as hard as I could, just hadn’t worked.
Today I have a son who longs to qualify for the Junior Olympics, being held next month near our home in Colorado for the first time.
Last year he qualified, but this year, at 13, is one of the “first years” in a tougher age class.
He has trained harder than ever in his life. He never missed a dryland session, jumping over bamboo poles, panting through pushups, hopping high and at great length, and holding eternal tucks; he loves ski racing, attends training, listens to his coaches.
It’s hard to see your child want something and work hard for it, and to realize he may not get it.
Early in the season, simply trying to figure out some scheduling, I said something to the effect of, “And if you don’t make the JOs. …” Teddy immediately said, “Oh, I’m going to make the JOs.”
He spoke seriously: “Mom. I figure I just have to put together two good runs.”
I said I liked his attitude, but that if it didn’t happen, that would be OK. “Not by me,” he said.
He has had performances that his coach said would have put him in. But he’s also had some falls, even some bad luck. The first of the two JO Qualifiers went poorly for him.
Now he speculates that he may not make it.
I said I liked his original approach and that I absolutely know he has the ability. “If you don’t make it, we take it from there, and next year is another year. But until then let’s think positive.”
Some years ago I competed in rock climbing, and I remember telling a friend, a leading climber named Robyn Erbesfield, that I might not pass the quarterfinal at a World Cup in England.
She looked at me sternly and said, “Well, if you talk like that you won’t.”
Robyn won the overall World Cup two years in a row, and then faced a particularly formidable challenger, a French climber named Laurence Guyon. Guyon entered the season finale at No. 1 and would have to finish below fourth,which she hadn’t done all season, to lose the title. Yet in the final round, while Robyn came out and cranked, Laurence rushed, missed the rests the other women used, fell low.
Robyn won the event – and the whole World Cup. Robyn was always up for a fight.
I’ve often told my sons, both of whom ski race, about Robyn. I’ve also told them that one of the best lines in all of sports is, “Win some, lose some.”
As important as giving your best is the lesser-known need to learn to accept it when you blow it. I remember traveling to Nuremberg, Germany, for a World Cup, and making the semifinals, and just spontaneously setting off up a sequence the wrong way. I fell, squandering an opportunity. But after cringing at my stupidity, I had to remember all the times I had been lucky to reach the spots I did.
I still remember in 1990 reading a thoughtful essay by a man looking back at how, as a high-school senior, he applied to Harvard and five other top colleges and was steamrollered. “I can still see my 18-year-old self standing by the mailbox in stunned disbelief, holding six white envelopes,” he wrote. “I had been judged ‘Not Ivy League material.”‘
He applied to his state university, the University of Michigan, which happens to be one of the only colleges in the country with a daily newspaper. A prize-winning daily newspaper. He was clearly plenty smart and I was reading his essay in Time magazine.
Ultimately, he wrote, the experience had brought him gains. It led him to value what he accomplished, it toughened him, and it taught him humility. And that is not a bad thing to take through life.
As for my ski story, I did stick around the ski school, tagged along, sought tips. And one day as I exited the lodge I bumped into Dwight. He was such a curmudgeon I can’t believe I said this to him: “You know, you haven’t seen the last of me yet.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said.
“Yeah!” I said stoutly, shaking in my boots.
“Well, why don’t you go put on a parka,” he said. “We’re short for Presidents Day, and I’d like you to start.”
So I did, and then and there I was given that blue parka with the Snow Bowl insignia.
If sports are a reflection of life, they can teach us to respond to disappointments with action or alternatives. It’s all experience, a continuum. Teddy might make the JOs. If he doesn’t, that will be all right too.
Alison Osius, executive editor of Rock and Ice magazine, is a climber, skier and parent who lives in Carbondale.
