Significant change may come to high school skiing next winter, as a proposal by the skiing committee of the Maine Principals’ Association would reduce the number of the classes in the sport from three to two for the first time since 1989.
“The genesis of this was that we had fewer and fewer teams competing for the overall state championship, particularly in Class C,” said Ted Hall, principal of Yarmouth High School and chair of the MPA ski committee. “In order to bring in a new sport you have to have a minimum of 10 teams — that was the requirement when we brought in ice hockey for girls — so we weren’t really meeting our own entry-level requirements for having combined [ski] teams.
“That was really true across all the classes.”
Just 15 boys teams and 15 girls teams throughout all three classes competed for this year’s combined Alpine and Nordic state championships. The dearth of contending schools was most pronounced in Class C, where only two girls teams and three boys squads vied for combined honors.
“The sense I’m getting from our coaches is I don’t think they’re as concerned with having just two classes,” said Eric Werntgen, athletic director at Fort Kent Community High School, whose boys and girls ski teams swept this year’s Class C combined state titles and have dominated the division during the past decade.
“The coaches’ feeling is it will push their athletes to get better because all of a sudden they’ll be in with many of those [Class] B schools. “The bottom line is it makes it more competitive. In [Class] C we just didn’t have many teams competing this year.”
According to the two-class proposal — which faces a final vote by the MPA’s general membership on April 30 — high schools with an enrollment of 500 or more will compete in Class A skiing, with Class B comprised of schools with enrollments of 499 or less.
Class A was 675-plus this year, Class B was 500-674 and Class C was 0-499.
“The number 500 seems random, but it worked out very well because we based it on the number of competitors in this year’s championships,” Hall said. “I think it’s fair to say that in the new Class A there are more Alpine and less Nordic and the new Class B has more Nordic competitors and fewer Alpine, but the combined in both is about the same so its a good cutoff for that reason.”
Of Eastern Maine schools that sent full combined Alpine and Nordic ski teams to this year’s Class B and Class C state meets, Presque Isle and Camden Hills of Rockport would move up to Class A under the proposal, while Caribou would remain in Class B and Fort Kent would move up to Class B.
In conjunction with its two-class recommendation, the ski committee has recommended the elimination of the combined competition and instead reserve its top recognition for separate state championship Alpine and Nordic teams.
“The sport has become, like many other sports for youths these days, much more specialized,” Hall said. “What we’re seeing across the board is that there are very few students doing both Nordic and Alpine, so those teams really don’t intersect much at all in the schools.
“They’re as different as a hockey team and a basketball team in terms of where they go for practice and meets. They’ve really ended up being two separate sports.”
One other issue under consideration by the ski committee deals with the future of its skimeister program.
The skimeister award goes to the top skier in each class based on performances in all four Nordic (classical and freestyle cross country races) and Alpine (slalom and giant slalom) events at the state meet.
But as specialization in the sport has increased, the number of skiers who race in all four events has dwindled.
This winter only 40 skiers, or 5.35 percent of the entries at the three state meets, competed for skimeister honors. Just four girls and three boys battled for the Class A skimeister crowns, while nine boys and 10 girls in Class B and nine girls and five boys in Class C raced in all four events.
Of the Class C skimeister contenders, more than a third — three girls and two boys — were from Fort Kent.
“The thing they’re not happy about here is the possibility of the skimeister being phased out,” Werntgen said. “We’ve had a long-standing tradition of competing for that, but at the same time I can see why. I don’t think there are a lot of people going after it statewide.”
The state’s ski schools are being surveyed by the MPA ski committee about the future of the skimeister award, with options ranging from eliminating the competition immediately, phasing it out after one or two years, or continuing it indefinitely.
That panel is scheduled to consider its survey results at its next meeting in April, according to MPA assistant executive director Mike Burnham, with the possibility of any change going into effect next winter.
