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Then and now: Academies have changed

Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 20, 2005 at midnight

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As he prepared to take the biggest career gamble of his life, Warren Witherell knew the odds were against him.

But his sense of adventure made the gamble too much to resist.

"Some students asked me to start a full-time ski school," said Witherell, recalling that career crossroad in 1970. "During the first meeting, I crossed my fingers behind my back and I said, 'If you guys will do the work, somebody in this room someday could be racing for the World Cup.' It was astounding. No one knew who the heck I was."

He was a 36-year-old ski teacher and the result was Burke Mountain Academy, the first full-time sports academy in the United States and the model for other sports-specific private schools, including the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, which now is part of IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla.

Before 1970, American Olympics skiers came almost exclusively from ski towns, where they learned to race with local clubs. But Witherell turned the sport, and the way America trains its young athletes, in a new direction when he transformed a 100-year-old farmhouse into a rustic classroom and bunkhouse.

Starting with six students, a revolutionary technical approach to racing and an endless supply of gumption, Witherell began to lure kids from cities and suburbs, creating a mountain of new talent.

Despite the humble start (an early sign read: Burke Ski Academy - for self-motivated students . . . Warren Witherell, headmaster and janitor), Burke produced four Olympians by 1976 and 40 overall, including Diann Roffe- Steinrotter, the 1994 super-G gold medalist, and Eric Schlopy, a medal hopeful for the Turin Games in two months.

"Our long-range plan was seven days. Even after the first year, I never conceived what it was going to do," said Witherell, who now runs Crested Butte Academy. "But the early '70s were a time of great experimentation. We had the freedom to do different things, freedom that didn't exist in the '80s and doesn't exist now."

Witherell grew up in Albany, N.Y., was a world trick water-skiing champion at 18 and played soccer, hockey and baseball at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in the mid-1950s.

Although he didn't ski until he was 21 and never took lessons, he was a natural on the slopes because of his unorthodox technique, which he published in a 1972 book How the Racers Ski, a bible on the racing circuit.

Not only did he bring new techniques and methods to the sport, he redefined the importance of developing the complete athlete.

"The academy movement is catching up in other sports, but it started at Burke," said Aldo Radamus, executive director of the Ski and Snowboard Club of Vail.

Witherell, who was inducted into the Alpine Skiing Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Water Ski Hall of Fame in 1984, hasn't lost any of his vigor - or creativity, His latest venture: a running program at Crested Butte Academy.

"We have an altitude of 9,000 feet and for really serious runners, that's a gift," he said. "We have to go down to the valley to run some days to get speed training. There isn't enough oxygen up here.

"Our goal is to develop the program to include eight boys and eight girls. I think it will fly. Even in a sport like track, there is money to be made."