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Alpine Skiing Virtual Admission Event

On January 21, we held our Alpine Skiing Virtual Admission Event, including a virtual tour of our Alpine Skiing program at Northwood School, as well as discussions with faculty and students, which answers a lot of questions that prospective students and parents may have about skiing at a boarding school, and Northwood School in particular. If you missed it, we invite you to watch the video on YouTube. A full transcript of the event is also copied below.

Watch the Alpine Skiing Virtual Admission Event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqMyX3rs0E

Transcript:

Carrie Wardlaw:               And then if you have direct questions, please just put them in the chat. Because I think it'll be a little bit easier to just manage them that way. So I didn't even introduce myself. I'm sorry. I'm Carrie Wardlaw, I work in the admissions office. I've been here a long time with a break in the middle, but I have a student here. My son is a freshman skier. So I feel like I know the ins and outs. I was a ski coach here for a while. So I do know a little bit about the program. We also have Terry DelliQuadri, who's our program director with us. Katie Gilligan, who's the director of ski operations here, and she's also the women's FIS coach. Norah Dempsey, who is a senior here and one of Katie's athletes and Aiden Smith, who's an alum who graduated two years ago and is now at RPI.

So they're going to help me with our presentation and just hopefully help you guys understand us a little bit more. So just a general overview about Northwood that you, just some statistics you may not know. We're a student body of about 190 kids right now, boarding and day. We're about 145 boarders, 45 day students. We have kids, 145 domestic kids, 43... I'm just looking at my notes I don't get the number on. 43 international kids, we have 23 States represented and 27 countries right now. So we have a big diverse group of kids that are here right now, which we're super excited about. During COVID, we've actually been able to be in person. We brought our kids in, in the fall, in August. We had did a two week quarantine for them on campus, delivering food to their rooms, putting them in cohorts to ensure that we could hopefully do our best job to keep them here in person.

And we did that successfully all the way through November. We had no positive cases on our campus staff or students. We sent the kids home in November for a six week break, basically to get them home. The skiers, and I'll like Katie and Terry to speak to that a little bit more later, that we brought them back a little bit so they could get some training in, but we have brought the students back yesterday. As a matter of fact, and today they're streaming in so that we can start our second trimester in person as well.

Another, they had to come with a negative test. They're in quarantine right now for a few days. And then we're going to hopefully start in person on Monday. And we did start virtually two weeks ago. So the kids have technically been in class for two weeks but that's been virtual. So I'm going to stop there just with the general stuff. And I'm going to show a ski video to you. And then after that, I'm going to let Katie and Terry take takeover. And again, you can put your questions in the chat and we'll hope to answer them.

[Northwood Skiing Video Begins]

Sarah Bennett:  So I decided to come here because it gave me opportunities that I didn't have back home, like going to school and skiing at the same time and pursuing my education while being able to train every day and have the same amount of time on snow than everyone else, but also not missing a lot of school.

Katie Gilligan:   Northwood offers a platform for excellence in both athletics and academics. We recently switched our schedule so that we are getting the high quality morning training at Whiteface. And then in the afternoons, they have all their classes. We also have switched it so that the second trimester, when we're in season, they're able to take a lighter course load. And that's been helping our skiers with maintaining a dean's list or high honors than in all three of their trimesters.

Rowen Norfolk: Yeah, winter schedule is the same as the spring and fall in the sense that you have all five classes. So you're still going to have a of full day of school, but you won't have the extra periods and the extra time off, you'll just still get the same amount of work, but you'll be able to ski for like four hours a day.

Terry DelliQuadri:           Whiteface is really the ideal training venue because unlike most other places that the teams train, we can train super-G full length GS. It's a training venue that's fully protected with safety netting all season long. We can close the trail at any time for our training. And it's very safe and very hard snow, which is what we're looking for.

Andrew Van Slyke:         Whiteface, I think is one of the best training venues in the East coast or in the country, just because of the trail we have. And the conditions are always pretty good.

Katie Gilligan:   Conditions that we have surface wise are world-class. We had Nor-Am's here two years ago. And all the national team coaches were saying how they hadn't seen a surface this legit since, they weren't sold in at the beginning of the world cup circuit. That says something for what these kids are training on. It also really helps develop really accurate tuning techniques, because if you go out there with equipment that's unprepared, you're not going to have a good day. So these kids are really learning the ins and outs of the technical side of their equipment. Understanding your equipment is half of the battle when it comes to athlete management and equipment management.

Sarah Coombs:  Perfect conditions for me growing up at Whiteface, training on hard ice, difficult conditions all the time. And then you go somewhere hard. And everyone, even at that high level freaked out and Terry was like, "Oh, you got this. This is what you train on every single day." And I went out there, I scored my first Nor-Am point. I came top 30, came like 29th or 30th or something.

Terry DelliQuadri:           NYSEF is the New York Ski Education Foundation. They manage the training venue at Whiteface. A lot of our skiers start at NYSEF from a young age. And then they move into Northwood school. Our teams train with Northwood coaches and NYSEF coaches. We work together. Quite often we train with the NYSEF athletes also. So it's a partnership.

Rowen Norfolk:                You have the ability to utilize NYSEF and Northwood coaches.

Terry DelliQuadri:           One of our most successful skiers, Thomas Vonn, he's come back and he started coaching last year with our ski team. And he was an Olympic athlete that came through the Northwood program.

Jadenlin Klebba: I liked the idea of accessibility to everything. It had things like music, mountain biking, whitewater kayaking, yoga, rock climbing, art, to drama. The fall and the springtime can be really fun. And whether it be going down to the Northwood beach, or I don't know, just going out for a night for dinner. It's a quick walk; I think it's really nice how central everything is in Lake Placid.

Sarah Coombs:  Oh, going out for lunch is probably the biggest one on weekends, or breakfast -- mmm -- Lake Placid has a plethora of breakfast spots. I'm not going to lie that's probably my favorite.

Katie Gilligan:   I think what makes Northwood so unique, is that it is set in this town of Lake Placid and to have a real town just minutes from our campus is unbelievable.

Terry DelliQuadri:           The best thing that anybody who's interested in Northwood School can really do is, come visit us, come see our campus. Meet our students. Come check out Whiteface.

[Northwood Skiing Video Ends]

Carrie Wardlaw:               So Katie and Terry, you guys can take it away.

Terry DelliQuadri:           Hi, my name is Terry DelliQuadri, as Carrie mentioned, I'm the ski program director at Northwood School here. And, I don't know if that's my phone that's dinging, I don't think it is. At the end of that video I said, the best thing you can do is come visit us, which I'm really sad to say is not possible these days, because it's so much nicer to sit across the table from everyone and talk to them about things. This virtual event, it doesn't come close to meeting people personally, but we're trying. A lot of you are very familiar with the setup we have that partnership with NYSEF, so I won't go into that much, but I will talk about it a little bit because some of you are coming from NYSEF. So NYSEF is the New York Ski Education Foundation.

They're the local club. All of our Northwood skiers joined the NYSEF club and our training is through NYSEF. So we are the Northwood ski team, but we're out there, we're also the NYSEF ski team. We train at Whiteface, like we talked about, which is an Olympic Hill it's top-notch, the national team in a regular year when there's no COVID, they come here almost every year for some training. Some high-level races, the US nationals, the Nor-Am circuit, which is just below the world cup. Junior Nationals, Eastern junior championships at the U16 level at the FIS U19 level. They have collegiate St. Lawrence hosts their carnival at Whiteface. In two years, the World University Championships are going to be held at Whiteface. It's a world-class venue. It's great for training because it's got a lot of terrain.

You're always, you got steeps, you got rollers to ski over. You got flats, we train on several different trails and we're able to train often super-G, full length GS, a minute 10 second GS sometimes, and all different kinds of slalom venues. So it's, and like I said, in the video, it's often very hard snow, which is perfect for training. Right now it just snowed over a foot. So we don't have those conditions, but I'm sure before the end of the season we'll get them. But Lake Placid is a great place to go to school. The kids talked about walking downtown, going to restaurants. Can't wait until next year when hopefully they can do that again.

Luckily this year even during the COVID, our skiers are... We've been going 20 days now after Christmas, training almost every day out at Whiteface. And Whiteface is a 10 minute drive from campus. And the hockey teams are able to train, the soccer teams are able to train, but we're the only ones that have had competitions. We just started having our first ski races last week and hopefully that will continue. One main difference that, over our program than the NYSEF winter term is we start right off in the fall with a full time six day, a week, dry land conditioning program. And the kids can also get out and do some mountain climbing, some kayaking and mountain biking. Utilizing the Adirondacks around us. Sorry, I just thought somebody texted me. Is Katie still up there?

Katie Gilligan:   Yep.

Terry DelliQuadri:           Okay. Just let me know when you want to break in Katie.

Katie Gilligan:   Yeah, yeah. No, I'm happy to jump in. My name's Katie Gilligan. I am the Director of Ski Operations and I'm the women's FIS coach, as Carrie mentioned before. I was also an alum. So I came back to Northwood. Woah, sorry, the screen behind me fell. I came back to Northwood to really further grow the ski program into what I knew it could be. I've been here for about seven years. And within that seven years, this program has really transformed just in that the administration has dedicated so much time and so many resources into making sure that the skiers are getting what they need, which is maybe a little bit different than my time here, where we used to train in the afternoons where now the skiers train in the morning.

We're able to get really premier training times. We get awesome flexibility from our academics and our teachers. And that's what is the beauty of the Northwood program, is I like to call it the best of both worlds. You're going to get the high level academics, but you're also going to get the flexibility to train and be an elite athlete at any level that you want. The other really cool part is that we're not just a ski academy, in that you're surrounded by other high level athletes in different areas. You're surrounded by hockey players and soccer players that all have the same focus, and mental state in the gym and just toward their athletic goals. But you also kind of have an out in terms of your socializing and becoming friends with people from all over the world that are also again, have your same frame of mind, but a little different outlet.

So that is kind of a couple of things that make us really unique in our program. And then to touch on the COVID, what Carrie was saying with how we survived COVID in the fall and how we continue to do so. There's a lot of silver linings in that when it comes to the ski team. And that is all the new technology that we have for our teachers to use, for our skiers that are, maybe not this year or traveling all over, but we will be again. And when we are, we're able to have, you touch a button and your whole class pops up and you're able to not miss those English lectures or classes like that, where it really takes a hit when you're not in class. And you're getting notes from friends and things like that.

We're able to utilize all this technology that we have, and it's going to help us down the road big time. So we're really excited about that. We're not excited about where we are now, but we'll get back to normal life. We'll get back to racing and we're really looking forward to having some of these technological advances that our whole community has put in place. So that's kind of what I had. Terry, if you want to talk about our kind of full round, year-round camps, I think that would be good to mention.

Terry DelliQuadri:             Okay. Yeah. So Carrie mentioned that we just took a 65 day break this year, the ski team, we only had about seven days off. Normally in a normal year, we start out with the dry land. When school starts, end of August, beginning of September, then we usually do a camp in Europe for two weeks. This year, we were going to do three weeks until we couldn't go to Europe. That's the end of October, beginning of November, then we come back. If there's not skiing here mid-November, we maybe go to Sunday River Maine for eight to 14 days. By the time we get back from that it's Christmas or early December, and we'll be skiing at home. The skiing started later this year, so we did the camp later in Maine.

Normally training starts pretty regularly at Whiteface by Thanksgiving. So our team usually is able to train here, early December. In the past... Every year's a little bit different. In the past, we've done some skiing right after Thanksgiving in Colorado. I don't know if we'll continue to do that, but that's something that happened in the past. Then potentially, we're talking about with the new ability to do virtual classes, skiing already in May and early June. Going forward, we're probably going to be starting to do that kind of thing more. The last two years haven't really worked out, but we always plan on a three-week camp in Chile, three or four week camp in in Chile ending right before school starts at the beginning of, or at the end of August. So that kind of an August block of training in Chile. This year was unable to happen because of COVID, last year there was no snow in Chile. So next year we'll do that.

Should we hear from maybe Norah Dempsey or…

Carrie Wardlaw:               Are you guys all set? Yeah, there's a couple of questions in the chat, so I'm just going to mute Norah and Aiden, make sure I can unmute them. You guys. Good?

Aiden Smith:     Yep.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Great. So one of the questions probably for you, Norah, can you just let us know where you were before you came to Northwood? Your ski program, your school, and sort of what drove you to look at boarding schools in general or just Northwood or how you got here?

Norah Dempsey:              All right. Well, I'm Norah Dempsey. I'm a senior here and I'm from Saratoga Springs, New York. And I went to public school there for my first two years of high school and skied with the NYSEF Winter Term Program. And my junior year, I transferred to Northwood because I was looking for a place where I could balance my academics as I got into the more advanced classes as high school progressed. So moving to Northwood really helped me balance my academics with my skiing in a way that a public school probably wouldn't have supported as well.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Great. Thanks. And how's the year going so far this year?

Norah Dempsey:              This year has gone very well. We had a great training block in Sunday River Maine, that I think really jump-started my season, considering that it had to start late because of COVID and conditions and now training at Whiteface over the holidays has been really good. The training today was a little soft because we just got snow, but I'm really excited for the conditions to go back to the legendary Whiteface ice.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Yes, it is there. Awesome. Thanks Norah. Aiden, I have a question for you too. Can you just describe what it was like as a skier sort of going through the college process here? How the college guidance office helped you, and how the coaches helped you get where you are today?

Aiden Smith:     Yeah. So going through like the whole college process, I think for everyone is kind of difficult, but the advisors at Northwood were pretty awesome. My advisor was John Spear and he helped me kind of navigate the whole thing and figure out exactly what I wanted from college and kind of where I wanted to go. And I wanted skiing to be a part of my college career, but it wasn't my main focus. So I kind of just looked for a college that I would like to be at the head. I go ski program on the side. So I go to RPI in Troy, which is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and they only have a club skiing team, but it's still USCSA and it's a lot of fun being a part of that.

And I mean, everybody at... Part of what I loved about Northwood was that the teachers and the faculty were like your friends and they wanted to see you succeed. So Katie and Terry helped me kind of figure out also what I wanted to do and all my coaches helped me figure that out and same with the teachers and the advisors as well. So, I mean, that was kind of one of my favorite things about Northwood, it was just the friendliness of the faculty.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Awesome. Thanks. Do you have any siblings that went here Aiden?

Aiden Smith:     Yes, I do. I have two siblings both of which went to Northwood and graduated. I have a twin sister and an older brother who actually finished or graduated from college last year and now has a job and they both ski raced through NYSEF at Northwood.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Great. Thank you. Norah, I'm going to put you on the spot again, just because this is always a question that we get. What's one of your favorite sort of traditions or events or things that go on at Northwood? It doesn't have to be ski related. It certainly can be, but if there's anything else that you really love, share.

Norah Dempsey:              Well, this isn't a tradition yet because it's only happened for one year, but this year during the fall, the entire school spent a lot of time outside, just on the fields in front of the school playing football and soccer and spike ball. And I'd say like seeing how we couldn't spend time inside with each other and had to be separated into cohorts for the most part, I think it was really amazing to see the whole school come together and still have fun when... Make the best of what we could and playing games outside was just the best part of my fall for sure.

Carrie Wardlaw:               That's great. I do agree. It's funny, I think it's going to become a tradition because it was one of those things that came out of COVID that was a silver lining, that everyone just says they had such a blast all fall being able to be together where normally, people start to travel or at least some of the other teams. And so I thought that was pretty neat too. Again, anyone that's on the call, feel free to throw a question in the chat so we can ask these guys. They're here for you, Katie or Terry, or specific age groups where we can certainly answer that too. Someone just said, what has been the most valuable part of Northwood besides skiing? So Norah or Aiden feel free. I think both of you could hop into that one.

Aiden Smith:     Yeah. I think I have a deep something for that. One of my…also…opportunity, I think at least when I was there, Northwood had so many different kinds of opportunities. Before I came to Northwood, I was just like, I ski raced and I did soccer sometimes for fun, but because there's not like a PE class or anything like that, you have to have a sport in the fall, winter and spring. And I had to figure out kind of what I wanted to do for the spring sport of my freshman year and I never mountain biked before, but I saw that that was an opportunity that I had. And I did that for the spring semester and I've done it every year since, both in the fall and the spring. And it's become one of my favorite things to do in the Adirondacks. And that even got me into road biking too. So I think like, opportunity.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Yeah. I'd say, and Katie can even probably speak to this because she's an alum as well. But I hear when alum come back, one of the things that they do talk about is how they all sort of get out of their comfort zone a little bit and try all these new things that maybe they thought that they never would ever have tried in the past. Just because you sort of set yourself on a path and don't have any idea what may come your way. And we do have such a great place where we live and work and play and to experience all of that obviously helps your sport for one, to try all those different things. So thank you. I don't know Katie, if you did want to add to that at all.

Katie Gilligan:   No, it's what you said, LakePlacid is such a unique spot because of all the things we get to do and, pond hockey and those kinds of things are way out of my comfort zone. And I did them when I was a kid and now I came back and I married the hockey coach. So I mean it all comes full circle.

Carrie Wardlaw:               I feel like he really married up though, because he married you. Don't tell him that. Aiden, just one more for you. I know you touched on a little bit, but do you think your experience here really... Are you as well prepared for college as you thought you would be coming out of here?

Aiden Smith:     I mean, yeah. I certainly where I go for college is pretty high for academics and it's certainly challenging, but I think a lot of my classes at Northwood were also really challenging and they kind of help give me some study methods and that kind of stuff to be more prepared than I think if I just went to my public high school for the types of classes that I'm taking. Like AP literature and AP language were some of the more difficult classes that I took and helped. And I think by taking those classes, I'm more prepared for my academics now.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Great. Thank you. One other question just popped up. Norah, can you just explain sort of a typical day in the life of a ski racer? Someone wanted to ask maybe not a COVID day, but in a normal day. No let's hope this is a one-off and we don't have to ever talk about the COVID anymore, but on a typical normal day.

Norah Dempsey:              All right. Well, in the winter, on a typical day, we wake up, go pick up breakfast at around 7:30, leave for the mountain at eight, and we train till 11:30 and get back in time for lunch and have a quick lunch. Maybe get in dress code. And we go to our classes in the afternoon and then we have dinner at about six and study hall from 7:45 to 9:45. And usually we find time to tune either on our off periods or before study hall. And then we are exhausted from skiing and school day. So we go to bed and wake up and do it again.

Carrie Wardlaw:               That's great. Yeah. And just to touch on that too, and in case you didn't know, our winter schedule is such that we on Mondays have an all-academic day. So we let the kids sleep in. We don't start classes till a little bit later. They have all day of classes with some breaks in between, but there's usually no sports on Monday. I mean, again, this year is a little different just because the schedules aren't any kind of normalcy, but then they could meet with their teachers, get some extra help because they probably raced all weekend. And then we do have that dinner and to our study hall, but then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, as Katie mentioned, we go to school in the morning, I'm sorry, go to the mountain in the morning do all of our co-curriculars, have school in the afternoon from 12:30 to six.

Dinner, study hall and then Fridays, because we don't like to do anything to make it easy, We go back to our morning schedule in the winter, but we have shortened classes. So everything is done by noonish. And then that way, if the kids do have to leave for a race, hopefully they've met all their classes and they wouldn't miss them on a Friday. Obviously we know ski racing's a little different where it's not just on the weekends, so sometimes you'll miss the entire week if you're going to a FIS race, but that's our winter schedule, which really was put into place for the skiers, because Katie said, obviously training in the morning is much more pleasant than in the dark cold afternoon here.

So they really get the best snow. And then we just really focus on academics in the afternoon. So thanks Norah for that. That's all the questions that I have in the chat right now, unless anyone else wants to throw one in or Katie and Terry, if we've missed anything. If not, I can speak a little bit to the admissions process, but if you guys want to chat a little more ski stuff before we go, please feel free.

Terry DelliQuadri:           Just following up on what you just said, Carrie, I think we're a small enough ski team here. We have 25 kids and we have, sometimes we always have a range of abilities. Sometimes we have athletes who are racing at the highest level in the U.S. They race in Nor-Am's which means they're missing a lot of school. And then we have kids that are more intent on, they actually miss some training for school. So we have both ends and being such a small program where we're able to support everyone, we can offer support to that really high level person who's maybe going to school one day in two weeks and we can also support the person that never misses a class.

Katie Gilligan:   Yeah, kind of a cool story about just individualizing some students' schedules like that is, you saw on the video before Sarah Bennett, who's now skiing on the Canadian Junior Development team. She missed pretty much her entire senior winter. She was on the road so much doing the full Nor-Am circuit and she had a real interest for videography. And she was always the kid with the GoPro on the hill and she created some really cool edits. And our head of our, like, Creative Director here at Northwood took her, and made like an independent study for her and worked with her individually. Because she was on the road all the time. And he was able to work with her somewhat virtually and taught her a ton of these videography skills. And she was able to get a credit for that and develop a passion of hers while she was on the road.

So that's just one example of how we're able to kind of manipulate schedules and work with everyone. And like Aiden said it really offers some opportunities that are super unique.

Carrie Wardlaw:               Yeah. Thanks Katie. So I'll just step into sort of the admissions process, which we hope you all do after hearing this and please feel free to reach out to any one of us with more questions. The next step is basically to start an application, which we would love to see from everybody that happens on our website. It's if you go to Northwoodschool.org under the admissions tab, there's a couple of different places you can go, you can either use gateway or SAO to do that. It's very simple. All the steps are listed on our website on how to do that.

And basically once you start the gateway application, it gives you exactly what we need from you. But again, you can always reach out to anyone in the admissions office or Katie or Terry to ask any questions about that. So that's all we have. I really appreciate people coming on and listening to us and hearing about Northwood. And again, please reach out to anyone. If you have any more questions or need any more info. Thank you. Thanks everyone.