Skiing has been a staple of the Hilltop for many years. Dating as far back as the 1980s, Skiing was at the forefront of Saint Anselm’s wide variety of varsity sports. The team competes in the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association (USCSA) in the McConnell Division. Their competition consists of a wide variety of different colleges from all over the northeast, from schools like Babson and Umass Amherst to even Castleton. The Saint Anselm ski team goes out and competes with some of the best of the best.

The season consists of a meet-style competition similar to track and field. Throughout a given meet, you have your men’s competitions and women’s competitions. During these competitions, a skier gets points based on where they finish. At the end of the meet, whoever has the most points wins the competition overall. Throughout the season, the Hawks have traveled all over the area, including places like Pats Peak in New Hampshire and even West Mountain in New York.

The ski team practices at Pats Peak in Henniker, New Hampshire, where students bought season passes. During the pre-season, the team practiced on the mountain five days a week. While in school, the team goes two to three days a week. Pats Peak provides the team with training space and a fitting room.

The team has recently added a new coach, Eddie Moran, an alumni who graduated in 2022. But, Moran isn’t a full-time coach–he has a full-time job, and can only help on the weekends. The ski team is primarily student-led. The leadership of the team prepares their transportation, rents vans, makes food payments, and drives themselves to the mountains where the Team practices and competes.

The Hawks finished their season 6th in the men’s division and 7th in the women’s division. Senior and club President Aidan Shea led the men in points with Sophomore Chris Carville not finishing too far behind Shea in points. On the women’s side, freshman Jamie Lemire led the Hawks in points with fellow freshman Ashleigh Berge finishing second in scoring.

At the end of their 2018 season, Saint Anselm College had to pull Skiing from the varsity catalog. Since then, the ski team has continued, but as a club. Senior and President of the club Aidan Shea explained the reasoning for pulling the team from the athletics department was that “seasons had gotten more expensive… the athletics program was trying to build in other areas. We were the team that got cut.”

Shea continued to harken on hoping for the team to go back to varsity status. He continued, “We wish we were, we wish we could go back to it [being a varsity team], we’re kind of working on maybe going back towards it. But it’s really expensive and I think that’s really why we got cut.” The money that goes into ski racing is rather expensive. Most players on teams have upwards of 4-5 different pairs of skis.

This financial burden has played a factor in the turnout of members of the team. Shea hopes that if the team can get more funds, it may draw in more new students to join the team. He continued to say, “We’ve got 14 racers and a lot of teams have 14 racers for their men’s and their women’s, too. So it’s difficult to compete for us, especially because we don’t have that help in that funding.” The club president went on to mention that there is added pressure with having fewer people on the team compared to everyone else in the field to compete and contend.

However, Shea and his team are very grateful for what the school provides the team. The captain said, “We’re really thankful to have SGA. They give us a lot of money. A lot of equipment, safety equipment for personal use, ski waxing, tuning equipment, gloves, all that like, basic stuff is on the student, which is hard because skiing’s expensive.”

Unfortunately, with the looming budget cuts, many clubs across campus fear of potentially losing funds. For the ski team, this fear can result in the loss of the club as a whole. But, Aidan Shea is trying to set the groundwork to potentially revive the club. The senior mentioned, “I’m working on a potential opportunity to try to make another push for a more hybrid kind of program. Maybe not full representation from school, but a little. A little more helpful in terms of maybe marketing the team and letting people know that we have a team and that we are looking for new members.” Shea continued by mentioning how people can join the club. “Right now, we’re still a club, so we have the club fair and an Instagram… it’s really easy to join the team, you just have to have a decent background in racing.”

Regardless of the outcome of budget cuts, the impact the Saint Anselm ski team has made on the Hilltop is nothing less than extraordinary. They work hard, they play hard, and they represent what it means to be Anselmian.