Holderness School Joins U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s High Performance Center Partnership Program

Racer at Holderness School. Provided by Holderness School

Press Release provided by Holderness School

As summer turns to fall, Holderness School’s skiers and snowboarders are already gearing up for another successful winter. Many of the school’s top ski racers are currently attending a two-week training camp in Saas Fee, Switzerland, running gates on a glacier at 11,000 feet.

Given the program’s lofty ambitions, that high-altitude glacier is a fitting place for Holderness athletes to launch their winter buildup.

“Our goals are to continue to strive to put multiple kids through the national championship program and to continue to be the best in the state of New Hampshire and strive to be the best in New England,” said Director of Snow Sports Ben Drummond, who sent 26 Holderness skiers and snowboarders to national championships last winter.

Holderness is in a great position to improve on that success. This summer, Holderness School cemented its status as one of the top snow sports schools in the country when U.S. Ski & Snowboard (USSS) renewed the school’s “Gold Certified” club status and invited Holderness to join its High Performance Center (HPC) Partnership Program, an elite designation that establishes Holderness as an incubator for the country’s top young skiing and snowboarding talent. 

“This is a huge honor for Holderness School and our snow sports program,” Drummond said. “It proves to everyone out there that our facilities and our staff can take kids to the highest level, whether it’s trying to ski in college or make the U.S. Ski Team.”

The school’s snow sports program and its facilities are unmatched among independent schools, producing 17 Olympians and 38 National Team members over the years. Holderness first earned its Gold Certified club status—a designation awarded to the top 7 percent of clubs nationwide—in 2020 after an exhaustive review process to assess the program’s principles and practices across eight areas of organizational performance. In the years since, the program has only grown and improved.

Since 2020, a $6 million gift to Holderness has supported numerous snow sports-related projects, including the construction of the Mittersill Performance Center at Cannon Mountain, a U.S. Ski Team training venue and home to Holderness Eastern Alpine racers; the installation of an on-campus freeski air bag jump; and the design and construction of a 5-kilometer homologated cross country skiing venue with 2 kilometers of lighted trail and 2.5 kilometers of snowmaking.

Those investments have paid remarkable dividends for Holderness student-athletes. During the 2024–25 school year, Holderness sent an unprecedented number of skiers and snowboarders—26 in total—to national competitions. After USSS officials toured the Holderness campus earlier this year, it became clear that the school belonged in the HPC Partnership program. 

Established in 2017, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard HPC Partnership Program shares knowledge, systems, and processes of athlete development between its own High Performance Department and the nation’s top echelon of ski and snowboard clubs.

By joining the program, Holderness will benefit directly from USSS’s cutting-edge knowledge. Holderness coaches and athletic training staff will collaborate with other HPC clubs and attend quarterly meetings where leading experts from USSS will share their latest training methodologies and strategies for all-around high performance. By sharing its training expertise with the nation’s top ski and snowboard clubs, USSS hopes to identify and develop the next generation of world-class skiers and snowboarders.

“We are striving to enhance collaboration and integration between U.S. Ski & Snowboard and High Performance Centers to create a world-leading National Athletic Development System,” USSS officials wrote in their invitation to Holderness.

“Our focus is to collaborate with the snowsport community for a unified pathway to excellence, continuously learn and educate all stakeholders, from the athlete to the directors, and mentor high-performance clubs to lead smaller grassroots clubs to further extend the breadth of knowledge sharing.”

That willingness to share knowledge is likely to benefit all Holderness student-athletes, not just those who compete on snow.

“It’s not just going to benefit our alpine skiers,” Drummond said. “It’s going to benefit the entire school to have the High Performance Center and the training that our staff will get from these U.S. Ski Team instructors.”