According to Scott Cooper ’17, when you’re a college student, you can have a social life, you can pursue athletics, and you can excel at academic work. Alpine ski racers, however, really need to choose two of the three.
For Cooper, a Reno, Nev., native who started skiing at age two and racing at six, the choice of where to focus was easy. In addition to following a rigorous schedule with the college’s ski team in the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association, the most competitive league in collegiate skiing, Cooper is a history and political studies major pursuing minors in business administration and legal studies.
Cooper’s dedication to athletic and academic excellence earned him a spot on the prestigious National Collegiate All-Academic Ski Team this year, along with his teammates Diana Abbot ’18, James Marshall ’18, Morganne Murphy-Meyers ’17 and Kenneth Wilson ’17. The honor is awarded to skiers who maintain a minimum 3.5 grade point average and compete in one of three National Collegiate Athletic Association conferences.
The dedication and commitment required to earn such an achievement predate Cooper’s arrival at Colby-Sawyer. When he was 15, Cooper earned the rank of Eagle Scout after completing an extensive community service project in which he reversed the effects of bee colony collapse in Reno’s parkland areas.
During his last two years of high school, he attended Sugar Bowl Academy in California, a college preparatory high school for competitive skiers, where he trained for four hours every morning before heading to four hours of classes and he maintained a full competition schedule.
After high school, Cooper took two gap years. He skied fulltime the first year with Sugar Bowl Academy, competing across the country and around the world, spending the summer in New Zealand, and, as he says, chasing winter. He spent the next year competing with Ski Club Vail, then decided it was time to apply to college.
Cooper was familiar with Colby-Sawyer, having spent childhood summers at a family home in Andover, but it was the ski program and the easy accessibility to the training facilities at Mount Sunapee that really drew him to the college.
During the college ski season, Cooper trains on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; travels to competitions throughout the Northeast on Thursday evenings; and competes on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. He takes a break from skiing on Mondays. He spent last summer in Oregon, training on Mt. Hood and working in a Völkl ski shop.
Cooper’s short-term goal is to finish college while skiing and competing, but he has longer-range plans, too. “There’s a certain point where you compete in college, and then there are other things you move on to in life,” he says. “I’m looking to apply to grad schools, try to get my J.D. and then go from there.”
- Mary McLaughlin is director of Residential Education at Colby-Sawyer. She holds a B.A. from the University of New Hampshire and an M.Ed. from the University of Vermont.
