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By BRYAN CHU, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, March 18, 2007
LAKE PLACID -- This isn't your typical high school.
Friday nights aren't football nights; this school doesn't have a football team. Senior class president Susan Ostrow said that's no problem they have hockey players.
There are no pep rallies, no cheerleaders and no prom.
It's in a small town with not much to do. The Stewart's down the street is the popular hangout for students. The nearest mall is an hour away, and the local movie theater shows only a handful of evening flicks each day.
It's a small price to pay when you're a teenager at the National Sports Academy, where dreams of being in the Winter Olympics are on the minds of all the students.
"You have to sacrifice that for your sport," senior hockey player Nick Certo of Buffalo said. "I'd rather know I'm going to be successful at something than having fun as a teenager."
Tucked away on Lake Placid Club Drive, a rustic green three-story building sits unassumingly. Street signs warn cars to slow down: Children at play. Driving by, it's easy to miss the wooden sign out front that reads "National Sports Academy."
NSA, a coeducational school co-founded in 1977 by David Wenn, who's still its head, is where tomorrow's winter sports athletes skiers and hockey players, primarily -- are taught and trained.
Though they come from across the nation and beyond, including Serbia and Wales, all 75 students, in grades 8-12, have the same goal: to get an education while preparing for a shot at the Olympics.
"We offer kids an opportunity to fulfill a passion while helping them become solid, productive citizens," Wenn said. "It takes a tremendous amount of work, concentration and training for the kids to achieve what they are achieving."
World is their classroom
Alpine skier Tommy Biesemeyer of Keene never could have imagined a senior year like this.
In the past three months, the 18-year-old has traveled to Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Colorado, Montana, Maine and Vermont for competition.
"I feel like a professional athlete," said Biesemeyer, who recently qualified with NSA graduate Ethan Weibrecht for the U.S. Alpine Championships.
The experience is invaluable. If these athletes don't make the Olympics, they do get early exposure to what it's like being a collegiate athlete.
Life on the road is tough. These athletes scramble to find time to do homework, whether it is on the bus, plane, or in their hotel rooms.
"It's hard, it's stressful," Biesemeyer said. "I'm definitely behind."
Imagine waking up at 6 a.m. for practice, attending strength and conditioning training, then going to a full day of classes from noon until 5 p.m. Tack that onto a demanding sports schedule in which athletes compete nearly four times as often as a high school team. Study time is at a premium.
"It's kind of like a sleep deprivation," said Ostrow, a hockey player. "You're so tired, you're awake."
The trade-off: time to train.
As a seventh-grader, Matt Saehrig, a freshman ski racer from Lake Placid, missed nearly half of his classes at Saranac Lake Middle School because of practice and competitions. Attending public school, which has 180 school days, made training nearly impossible.
"It was definitely really hard," Saehrig said. "I was missing so much school. Your grades take a hit."
NSA, which doesn't receive funding from the state but gets its money from donations, school tuition, boarding and other fees, is required to have 154 school days. But with travel, that number can dip to 120. NSA's solution: block scheduling. The more difficult subjects, such as math and science, are loaded into the fall and spring, when students attend two class periods for each subject. In winter, they don't meet at all because students are swamped with the demands of travel and competition. During the winter there are no Friday classes because of races or tournaments. As for the missed Fridays, February vacation is forgone.
John Jacobs of Glens Falls, father of senior Alpine skier Jena Jacobs, said sending his daughter to NSA has been a positive experience. "We kind of felt she needed to be directed," Jacobs said. "She's learning time-management and self-reliance skills."
Classes are small, an average of six students to every teacher. French teacher and Dean of Students Brian Posthauer said students get a hands-on approach. "There's no real hiding," he said. "There are no back rows."
These athletes can't slack off in work. NSA's rule: bad grades, no travel.
Students who fail to keep up their side of academics are put on academic probation. John Spear, dean of academic affairs, said a 2.0 grade-point average or 70 percent average is required.
"Simply saying you can't travel unless (they) raise (their) grades, is enough incentive," Spear said.
Their goals are in site
Host to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, Lake Placid gives every NSA athlete inspiration. The Olympic rings are displayed at every street corner. The Olympic Center is just yards away. A speedskating rink is across the street. Ski jumps, one of just three in the nation, are nearby. The peaks of Whiteface Mountain and Mt. Van Hoevenberg seem close enough to reach out and touch.
"I look around and I think it's amazing," said goalie Martin Clarkson of Wales, on skating on the same rink where the U.S. hockey team upset the Soviet Union in 1980.
Athletes said they also enjoy having 1-on-1 relationships with coaches.
Matt Cook is Nordic director for New York Ski Educational Foundation, which partners with NSA, videotapes ski jumpers and critiques them frame by frame. It's helped junior jumper Alex Madden.
"I've gotten a lot better since coming to NSA," he said. "I've done over 1,000 jumps on this hill, so it seems totally normal."
Being an NSA athlete is expensive. NSA doesn't pay for travel or competition fees. With older athletes sometimes traveling 25 days a month, parents take the brunt of the hit, even with financial aid from NSA.
On top of the tuition and board, parents such as John Jacobs dole out an additional $6,000 a year for hotels, flights, ski passes and equipment for competitions at such remote places as Saas Fee, Switzerland.
Aline Galgay, whose sons Brandon and Steve are skiers, is willing to pull out her wallet to better her child's performance. "(Going to NSA) has made a world of difference," she said. "In less than a week's time, (the coaches at NSA) picked up technical flaws no one noticed."
In the winter sports world, academies such as NSA are as necessary to a skier as snow. There are about three dozen academies in the United States, including Stratton Mountain School in Vermont and Solitude Snowsports Academy in Utah.
Stephen Mergenthaler, the Alpine program director for 14 years at NSA and a coach for 45 years, said he believes putting young athletes in a regimen and close to the mountains is essential.
"It gives them a big advantage," he said. "For the most part, most of the national team members for the U.S. ski team come from pretty strong ski programs like NSA and other academies."
Rules are old school
The dorm rooms at NSA, which are double, triple and quadruple occupancies, are like any other college campus dorms. There are rules: No drugs, alcohol or sex. Also, girls and boys have separate floors and aren't allowed to visit each other's floors, though that rule isn't always strictly enforced.
"We have dorm parents on each floor, but ... " Ostrow said.
NSA students says it's difficult to have a serious relationship with a peer of the opposite sex, not because it's hard to find someone in a class of 75, but because of the repercussions of having one in such a close-knit community. Hockey player Chris Wilcox of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he won't be dating anyone any time soon. "If anything happens, the whole school knows about it," he said.
Most teenagers are self-conscious about their appearance. Not here. Students have no problem being seen wearing just a hooded sweat shirt and some sweat pants, though school co-founder Wenn would rather have his students dress in attire that they don't sleep in.
"No one cares," Jena Jacobs said. "It's like you don't wear makeup for your family. You see the person every day."
The students are lean, as you might expect. Bill Kerwood, a graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, is one of three cooks responsible for fueling them. Dinners can be as fancy as poached salmon or London broil steaks. On spaghetti night, these teens can go through 20 to 25 pounds of fettuccine and 40 pounds of meat.
The most popular meal? That's easy, Kerwood said: grilled cheese and tomato soup.
There's no preferential treatment at NSA. Everyone has to pull his or her own weight doing chores much like the ones they'd be doing at home: wiping down tables, washing dishes and cleaning their rooms (dorm parents do nightly checks).
"I think it's good for them," Kerwood said. "It keeps it real."
After all, they are teenagers.
All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2007, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.
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