One hundred sixteen students are tied together through their love of winter sports on The Michigan State Ski and Snowboard Team. Thirty-seven years after the team’s creation, MSU racers continue to make the trek up north to compete against fellow college students.
The Michigan State team participates in four regular-season races before heading up to Marquette, Mich. to compete in the Midwest Regional Championship hosted by the United States Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association (USCSA).
The weekends are divided into eight different races, over a two-day span, where the men’s and women’s skiers and snowboarders compete in slalom and giant slalom events. Combined, the MSU team has seven wins over 16 races for a fairly successful season two weekends into the season.
For junior ski racer Briana Goldsmith, the Ski and Snowboard Team presented an opportunity to continue the sport to which she has dedicated so much of her life. Goldsmith grew up in Harbor Springs, and developed a love for the sport at Nubs Nob where she started skiing at age 3.
“I didn't want to let my talent go to waste, I guess in some way,” Goldsmith said. “But, I heard that I could continue racing in college—I was like, Okay, that's a good idea. So, I chose to be on the team.”
Jack Deak, a senior ski racer and the former team president, found himself in a similar boat when he came to Michigan State. Deak spent so much time racing growing up in Northville, Mich., and ultimately made the decision to join the team his freshman year.
“Getting to know people and meeting lifelong friends, but also being able to still compete in a sport that I loved in high school, but at the college level,” Deak said. “Usually when football ends, you're not gonna play football ever again, but it's nice to be able to do that and continue through college doing something I loved to do in high school.”
Deak has been racing since his dad randomly signed him up for race club at Mt. Brighton nearly 10 years ago. Now, the skier helps coach the Brighton High School ski team at his home hill and assists the USCSA in running the division the Michigan State team races in.
The start of the regular season has been unpredictable because of the quickly changing Michigan weather, and the slope conditions during race weekends drastically vary.
According to the National Weather Service, the average temperature in Lansing last December was 8.8 degrees warmer than usual at 38.8 F. There was also only 2.5 inches of snow throughout the entire month—not a great statistic to hit the slopes.
Goldsmith said that the less-than-ideal conditions did not affect the team’s preparations for the racing season because of the lack of ski hills near Michigan State’s campus, but impacted other teams.
“There are some teams in Michigan, like Northern Michigan University, that take it super seriously, and they do train every day,” Goldsmith said. “We don't really have an opportunity to do that since there's not really a ski slope near us here in East Lansing. So for us, it (warm weather) wasn't a super big deal because we kind of just run off muscle memory and whatnot. But for some of those other teams that was like a big deal….they weren't able to train when it was so warm. You're not able to put gates in the ground because you're just drilling in the dirt.”
January has been a colder and snowier month than December, according to the National Weather Service. The Lansing average temperature in January was 26.2 F with 18.1 inches of new snow. Even with better overall weather, the MSU ski team faced some wet conditions during their race on Jan. 27, and Deak and the organizers had to do some work to make the racing surfaces safe.
“The biggest thing is we changed most of our procedures,” Deak said. “We can actually salt the courses…30 minutes before you race you lay that in the race line. If it's above like 35 degrees it’ll harden in snow, which was a huge help. We actually did that on Saturday morning. We set the courses, put down the salt, we waited about an hour, and the surfaces got a lot better.”
