Squaw Valley Academy returns to its origins

Bryce Bennett slides into his seat at a desk in the front row of Mike Kahlich's algebra class. He pulls his laptop out and begins to highlight the correct answers to his homework as Mr. Kahlich reads them from the teacher's manual. When his teacher finishes, Bennett closes the laptop and brushes his right hand over the stickers plastered across it.

Bennett's hand skips from a black "Got KT?" sticker to a purple "Squaw Valley USA" one before it pauses on a red, white and blue logo of the U.S. Ski Team in the laptop's left corner. The hand lingers there, momentarily touching the 12-year old's dream before Bennett shoves the laptop back into a bag on the floor beside him.

This is the world of academics and athletics that Bennett inhabits at Squaw Valley Academy. It's a mixture of algebra and slalom, science and super-G, Language Arts and giant slalom. It's a world that Bennett is quickly emerging as the new face of - a throwback to the bygone years in which the school enabled athletes to succeed on and off the hill.

"He's a reminder of the potential that the school has to do a lot of good for athletes," Academy spokesperson Peter Berridge said. "Academics always comes first, but seeing someone like Bryce and the structure of the school support his athletic endeavors, you can't deny its benefits for him."

Since moving from North Tahoe Middle to the academy, Bennett has seen his skiing improve. He won the slalom and took second in the giant slalom at an invitational in Snow Summit, Calif., in February. He also earned his first trip to the Junior Olympics at Mt. Hood, Ore., where he won gold in the J4 super-G.

Squaw Valley Ski Team coaches credit his ability to ski at more practices midweek - something he wasn't able to do at North Tahoe Middle - with a lot of his success.

"He's able to train with older skiers on tougher courses with more role models," coach Lee Schmidt said. "It's made him better all around."



The academy turned school

On the left, just before the first bend in Squaw Valley Road, sit three cedar-colored buildings fashioned like log cabins. The first two were built in 1978 when SVA was founded. The third was built in the 1980s when the school decided it needed a girls dorm.

Current headmaster Donald Rees founded SVA, then known as Olympic Valley School, to offer a combination of learning, outdoor adventure and sports opportunities in the Sierra. Fresh off founding the Yosemite Institute and Headlands Institute in the Bay Area, he said he saw potential at the entrance to Squaw Valley "to give kids who do winter sports the opportunity to compete at the highest level while preparing for college performance."

Since its inception, the school has graduated a number of successful winter athletes. The school counts among alums: X Games competitor CR Johnson, Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley, U.S. ski team members Hansi and Tony Standteiner and pro snowboarders Scotty Wittlake and Martin Rasinger.

When it was originally created, the school catered to such athletes by serving as an all-inclusive academy, providing both teachers and coaches. However, in 1986, about the same time that it changed its name to SVA, the administration agreed to leave coaching up to parents and local teams in order to focus on exclusively on education.

Today, 78 students attend the academy. More than 60 students board, while 10 are day students only. Of the student body, only seven compete on ski and snowboard teams. Four students ski on the alpine team at Squaw Valley, two on the mountain's snowboard team and one on the Alpine Meadows alpine team.

"Because it's a small school, the flexibility allows teachers to work with kids outside of class," Berridge said. "That allows for training time, travel and the ability to send tutors to week-long racers."

Two to three years ago, Berridge said the academy had no competitive athletes, making it less of an academy and more of a traditional college preparatory school.

"Seeing the success of Bryce is moving us back in (the school's original) direction," Berridge said. "The school is well set up to accomodate those type of kids."

Most of the students at SVA end up there in order to receive individual attention unavailable at many larger, public schools. The two hour mandatory study hall, small class sizes and three hours they spend skiing or snowboarding four days a week allow most students to flourish, administrators say.

A year at SVA costs boarders $30,000 and day students $10,000. Most students enroll as sophomores. Since the school was founded, 100 percent of students have been accepted to an average of 2.5 colleges. Berridge credits the balance of academics and athletics with the success rate.

"It's not just what goes on in class," Berridge said. "Teachers share in activities outside the class. That allows them to make analogies to what students do in their free time - like talking physics in relation to the terrain park."

School beneath the slopes

The discussion at SVA last week in Mr. Kahlich's algebra class doesn't touch on physics or the terrain park. Instead, Kahlich writes several numbers on the board and reminds his class how to do scientific notation.

It's Bennett's second class of the day. Like everyone seated around him, he wears a shirt, unbuttoned at the top, with a tie that's loose around the neck. Over it, he sports a red ski jacket embroidered with "Far West Junior Championship Team 2005." Beneath his shaggy hair, his face is masked by what classmates call "a phat google tan."

Bennett started the day in Spanish and will finish with geography and life science before lunch time at 12:30. His Friday and Tuesday schedules are the same. Thursdays and Tuesdays also match, except students ski in the morning then and come in for class from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday is the only full day of class, making it his least favorite day of the week.

"It's boring," Bennett says. "You just go to school and do homework. My favorite day's Friday because I get to ski and then I have the weekend to look forward to."

Bennett's particulary excited on this Friday because he's one week closer to the Far West J4 and J5 championships at Sugar Bowl. He'll compete at the event in giant slalom, super-G and slalom. Training for it is in the back of his mind, he says, until he leaves for the mountain at 12:45 after a lunch of macaroni and cheese.

With close to six feet of new snow coming in, coaches Schmidt and Andy Bodey tell the racers they only want them to run the slalom course on Squaw's Exhibition run six times.

"The snow's good and it's probably some of the last of the season," Schmidt says. "Go freeski KT or something."

Bennett cuts his day short as advised, shooting through the slalom course six times before heading to Wildflower Cookie Shop, which he considers the best place to eat at Squaw. It's where he finishes most Fridays.

"It's just too skied out for me," Bennett says. "I just didn't want to go freeskiing. Usually, I do."

Eating a chocolate chip cookie and a pizza bagel, he smiles - just another Friday mixture of skiing, school and Wildflower. His thoughts have already begun to turn to the next day and training giant slalom.

"I want to be like Bode Miller," Bennett says. "I want to win the overall and sweep the Olympics. It's hard but I think I can do it. I just got to keep skiing well."