'Teaching those beginners': Snowsports school at Wachusett brings newcomers to slopes

One of the most overlooked parts of the ski and snowboard business is learning to ski and ride.

As in the ski school experience.

Just like in life, in which education is so important to later success, teaching newcomers the right way to do snow sports is crucial to keeping the industry stocked with new skiers and riders who have learned the fundamental skills to stay with the sport and make it part of their lifestyle.

At Wachusett Mountain, the place for this is called the snowsports school.

A serious ski and ride school

Wachusett takes teaching newcomers seriously. The Princeton ski area boasts one of the busiest and most successful ski and snowboard schools in the country, making Wachusett a key feeder area on the national stage. In 2016, Wachusett won the National Ski Areas Association's prestigious Conversion Cup award, given to resorts that have developed outstanding programs to convert new skiers and snowboarders into lifetime participants in the sport. And they try to repeat that accomplishment every year.

At the helm of this bustling operation — which runs with 300 instructors and sees many thousands of learners take lessons each season — is Courtney Crowley, now in her second season as snowsports director.

"That's our bread and butter, teaching those beginners, and we've got plenty of terrain for it," Crowley said.

The snowsports school offers all kinds of programs and affordable gear rental-lift ticket-and-lesson plans, for a wide range of age groups from kindergartners to middle-age skiers and first-timers to intermediate and advanced skiers looking to polish their skills. Wachusett's busy race program — which includes an adult league, race clinics and the NASTAR citizen race program as well as high school racing and training — comes under the school as well. Also on the menu of instructional offerings are private lessons, adaptive skiing and a popular women's clinic.

Crowley and cousins

The daughter of Wachusett president and CEO Jeff Crowley has skiing in her veins. She went to high school at the Stratton Mountain School ski race academy in Vermont and is a graduate of the University of Vermont, racing on the school's sailing team. After college, Crowley, 34, taught at a private boys' school in Greenwich, Connecticut and then spent a few years running Wachusett's group sales department.

Crowley is part of the strong third generation of the Crowley family now in key management at the ski area. Cousin David Crowley is base operations manager, and cousin Chris Stimpson is public relations manager. Carolyn Crowley Stimpson, Chris' mother and Jeff's sister, is vice president of mountain services and president of MTNside Ski and Ride. David Crowley Sr., brother of Jeff and Carolyn, is no longer involved in management due to a chronic illness; he is David's father.

Running the snowsports school is a good fit for Courtney Crowley with her ski and education background. While she oversees many accomplished longtime instructors, she already has attained some of the professional accreditations in the industry, and you'll find her on snow teaching a couple of sessions a week.

She inherited a snowsports school that already was in good shape under the direction of former director Thom Norton.

But Crowley is already looking to the future.

New building on the horizon

Plans for a new snowsports school building are slowly taking shape, Crowley told me. It will replace the outdated A-frame structure that sits awkwardly at the edge of the ski area overlooking the Ollie's beginner hill and its carpet lift.

"I love the history of it and all, but we've outgrown it, and it's time for something new," Crowley said.

While Crowley and Wachusett managers have been meeting with architects to sketch out initial plans, the new snowsports building is about two or three years out, Crowley told me.

First will come the new summit lift, she said. It will replace the existing Polar Express high-speed quad, expected for next season. It is still unclear whether it will be another high-speed four-seater or a sixpack, and I'm hoping Jeff Crowley tells me which as soon as he and his colleagues decide. They've been studying slope density and uphill capacity and things like that, so let's see what the decision will be.

Courtney Crowley's early vision for the new snowsports center is one that is more customer friendly and service based and not just filled with a bunch of computers and kiosks, a place "where people have plenty of places to sit and enjoy the space," she said.

It also will be oriented more toward the customers streaming in from the parking lot, while retaining a view of the hill, Crowley said. "We want to make it more appealing to the people when they come in," she said.

The building will also include a proper locker room to accommodate instructors, and more storage space for the MTNSide shop.

Among other ideas for the future is expanding instruction programs for older skiers and riders, Crowley said.

Skiing and snowboarding are great sports for aging, because, among other things, gravity is not an issue, and they’re a great way to meet people, stay active and enjoy the long New England winters. On weekday mornings, senior skiers are a fixture at Wachusett, and Crowley wants to tap into that market.

"We love adult learners," she said.

A local snowsports school grad

Patty Leonhardt is one of a large group of enthusiastic skiers who learned in mid-life.

The Fitchburg resident took up the sport at age 49, in part to be able to ski with her second husband, an avid skier.

He bought her a package of private lessons at Wachusett and she spent about eight weeks learning how to ski hand-me-up skis and even boots from her daughter, Amanda Norris of Westminster.

She recalls that her instructor, a young man, worked hard to get her comfortable on snow.

"He took me over to Ollie's, and I put the skis and the boots on, and he literally pushed me halfway up Ollie's and ran next to me as I went down, and then he pushed me up again and ran down. He said I just needed to get comfortable standing on a pair of skis for a while, so we did that."

"So by the end of the evening — at that point, it was a rope tow — I was riding up the rope tow with 5-year-olds," she recalled with a laugh.

Now, at age 74, Leonhardt has been retired for a decade and has done plenty of skiing, including around New England as well as trips to the Swiss and French Alps, and out west to the Lake Tahoe area, Colorado, Utah and Idaho and Canada.

And she has her own modern gear now, equipment that makes it easy and fun to keep skiing. She also participated in the women's clinic five or six years ago.

"I'm not a great skier and never going to be a great skier. I don't try to go fast," she said. "But you know when people say they don't like winter and don't want to ski because it's cold? The clothing now is so good that you're just not cold. And it gives you something to do in the winter. It's fun to get out there."

Family matters

As for Courtney Crowley, she's happy in her important role in the family business.

"I think this is a really good fit for me. I love working with all these guys. They're so dedicated and the team I have around me makes it worth it," she said. "And working for my dad and my aunt is a really good experience. I know that sometimes in family businesses people can say it's not a fun time, but I am very lucky that we all get along so well, and we have such a good time."

Busy night after the storm

I hit Wachusett Monday night after the big weekend storm, and I don't think I've ever seen the ski area that busy on a weekday night.

A confluence of stoke from the new snow, people off from work, and the first afternoon and night sessions of school groups created a situation in which vehicles were backed up on the Mountain Road, and all three parking lots were packed. Lift lines were really long, too, but they thinned out as the evening progressed.

David Crowley, the operations manager, was directing traffic near the entrance road and looked really happy that people were happy and there were a lot of them, and the real ski season had finally arrived after a dismal early season. I took his advice and headed to shuttle bus-served lot 3 and quickly found a spot to park in back — much easier than fighting my way around the main lot looking for scarce spots.

As I turned into the lot around 5:45 p.m., I saw Jeff Crowley literally running around the remote lot doing his best to keep parking operation and the ski area's shuttle bus fleet running smoothly.

It's actually amazing how well the buses work.

While you sometimes have to wait for a few minutes for a bus on a busy night like Monday, it's only a short wait. The buses are clean and well-lit and get you to the front door of the lodge quickly, bypassing traffic by entering the public vehicle exit and then making a quick U-turn for passengers to deboard.

At the end of the night, there's no wait. Just hop on a bus, and you're at the remote lot faster than if you had to walk with your skis to the back of the main lot.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Snowsports school at Wachusett brings on newcomers to slopes