Kathryn Rekas

The Alpine Ski team sits in on their kickoff meeting on Zoom because they are unable to gather in person. Introduced in this meeting are some of the new guidelines in place this season. Some of these guidelines include having a mask on while not racing, no spectators, as well as limited number of races and racers this season. Although these guidelines put a damper on the season, the team is hopeful and is looking forward to make the most out of it.

Despite the early fall snow, the Alpine Ski team was unable to take advantage of this promising weather to hit the slopes. Even though the MSHSL has approved their season to begin on Nov. 30 and end on Feb. 27, the COVID Preparedness Team has yet to make a decision on the feasibility of winter sports during remote learning.

Tyler May ’21 sheds light on the slow start to this season: “We were supposed to start captains’ practice [Nov. 9], but then the school got shut down, so that also got shut down. Right now thereís not really much we’re able to do because the kick off meeting we have every year was supposed to be a little bit ago, but it’s postponed until immediately after the [MSHSL] meets.”

     Among others, one of the new restrictions MSHSL put in place because of COVID-19 is that the girls and boys team can each only have 12 members. This means that the team will be cut down from about 65 to approximately 25-30, with alternates.

     May speaks to this change saying, “So we had JV, varsity, and C-squad, [the] development team, is what we called it. But now we’re only allowed six varsity racers and six JV racers for [each] girls and guys, so we’re just going to do that with a couple alternates, which will put us in the 25-30 range.”

      Will McDonald ’21 speculates on what effects will result from this change sharing, “I think there also [came] a lot of competition with that high number of kids, just for time on the snow and on the gates, so I think…there are definitely some benefits and downsides. Like there’s going to be more focus on the varsity and JV teams this year I think, but I think that some of that fun team atmosphere that comes with having a big team [will] definitely [be lost].”

Other than this change and the presence of social distancing and masks when not skiing, the Alpine team is unsure what to expect this season. May expresses, “As of now, weíre just kind of laying dormant, kind of waiting for more information.”

McDonald echoes this with, “I think we’ll have to figure out what happens and what athletics says about whether it can happen or not, but right now it’s kind of on hold, but the snow is coming down, so we could be on the slopes soon I guess.”