My name is Annie Leiter and I am a student and ski racer at the Mount Mansfield Winter Academy and Ski Club. I began skiing at age four when my parents bought me strap on skis and took me out in the yard of our house in Woodstock, Vermont.
It was love at first ski but, I was not satisfied with my gear and commissioned my dad to get me some ski poles. At age four I was shorter than the average skier so, unable to find poles suitable to my height my dad made me poles out of sticks. After tiring of the yard, my mom strapped me on a leash and I moved on to the slopes of Suicide Six ski area.
By age six, I had joined the Suicide Six Development Team a.k.a. “Devo.” Devo was a time of frequent French fry and hot cocoa breaks and learning to ride the chair lift without an adult. It was the time when I made my first ski racing friends, including Tobias Britton, with whom I now attend MMWA. After seven seasons at Suicide Six, I realized that it was time to move on.
Attending public school and ski racing in the winter did not mix. I missed eighteen days of school in one semester for various races and although I managed as best I could to keep up with my classes, it was a difficult to keep up. Also, many of my teammates had left Suicide Six to attend ski academies and I missed the company of teammates. Last year, I decided to attend MMWA because I liked skiing Stowe and it the students there seemed like a great group of people.
Perhaps one of the root causes for my immediate enthusiasm for ski racing, since my success in competitions, or rather lack thereof, certainly wasn’t sufficient, were the friendships I developed with my teammates. We had a blast! We sang songs at the tops of our lungs on the chairlift, had picnics on warm days and became regular lunch customers at the local general store.
An intrinsic part of my skiing experience is that these friendships have proved to be bonds that have lasted winter after winter. They have kept me motivated even when I was having trouble with my skiing. After all, in the rain, on the ice, in the blizzards and during the days when skiing is just unpleasant, everybody is in it together.
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Annie Leiter is a 17 year-old ski racer at the Mount Mansfield Winter Academy in Stowe. She's spent the past few months traveling around New England trying to ski as fast as she can. Read Annie's blog to hear her first-hand account of what it's like to be a junior ski racer moving up through the ranks.
