Winter 2019
Todd Ormiston
Head of School
Mount Snow Academy
Reach for the Stars
THE ANNUAL MSA BENEFIT – THE GALA – SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH
Boots & Bindings
Fun During the Academic Break
The U14s took advantage of the break to try out a new snow sport – Nordic skiing! They had perfect weather and great conditions. Very quickly everyone’s natural athleticism kicked in and they toured the trails of Timber Creek with smiles and laughter.
Athletic Updates
Alpine
Dear Alpine families,
Building momentum at MSA. Alpine athletes and coaches are hitting their stride as we move into February. With the cold weather, hard and grippy snow and fantastic training space, athletes and coaches are fine tuning their skills and constantly progressing forward. From podium results to personal best, all athletes are showing signs of growth, and as a staff we routinely work to plan and assess how things are developing. MSA Athletes from all age groups are winning and on the podium this winter. Congratulations to Chip Coffin, Paige Petrell, Erin McHugh, Maddie Cho, Henry Harding, Finn McCann, Patrick Leonard, Alyssa Kimble, Anna Lee Geoghan, Lila Sweetland, Sammy Cho, Tori Benyik, Ben Bush and Chaz Benyik for your excellent results thus far. All MSA athletes deserve a shout out and recognition, keep up the great work and results.Inspiration sometimes just hits you. I was inspired by something said by Patriots’ Superbowl MVP Julian Edelman in one of his interviews when asked how does he do it, he said (and I’m paraphrasing) “It’s all in the training and preparation the week before, the training gives me confidence to perform on game day” I take this to heart and I will be working with staff to ensure our training gives MSA athletes the confidence and composure to perform to their best at every race! Let’s get inspired, support our kids, and give it our best for the rest of the year. The journey we are on is exciting and I could not be more proud of the effort and diligence of our athletes and staff. Thank you parents for giving us you children to help cultivate their passion in this beautiful sport of alpine ski racing.
Lastly, it’s never too early to think of the summer and next season at MSA. We have a variety of Spring, Summer and Fall camps planned, and are developing next year’s school calendar. Please talk to your coaches or me about the value of this training and experience, it’s an important part of the journey! Information can be found here.
MSA Alpine Program: building confidence and character everyday!
Many Thanks,
Peter Stokloza, Alpine Program Technical Director
Freeski
The freeski team has seen considerable growth in the Jumpstart program this year. Jumpstart provides a platform for those too young for our full-time program to immerse themselves in MSA’s training regimen every Friday through Sunday, all winter long. The addition of Sam Marino to our coaching staff has been instrumental in keeping our juniors on the path to greatness.
On the opposite side of things, our older group has been competing at Nor-Am level slopestyle events like the Rev Tour Elite. They are currently in Colorado at the Copper Rev Tour, testing their mettle against the best in the West. As a whole, the freeskiing program has benefited from the daily work of our Cinematographer-In-Residence, Pierre Verville. Pierre will be filming our upcoming camp, taking place from February 22 through the 24. The camp will feature X-Games medalist and professional skier Keegan Kilbride, who will be skiing with our kids and speaking about his career during a dinner and movie showing at the school.
-Liam Downey, Head Freeski Coach
Snowboarding
Pencils & Paper

STEM @ MSA
STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. This can mean different things at different schools, but the common thread is linking the topics through hands-on activities and problem solving. At Mount Snow Academy, our STEM classes have been using Arduino circuit boards. Arduino is a company that makes low-cost, pre-made circuit boards with micro-controllers that run simple computer programs. We have been learning how to use Arduinos to control led lights, motors, and other devices. In class, we use the C++ computer language to design instructions for our hardware. We then upload the code to our Arduino, which we have wired with the correct hardware, and hopefully get it to run properly. Some projects we have learned are controlling a red-blue-green LED lights, an 8×8 LED matrix, and a servo motor. One of our favorite activities was programming a 8 LED array to flash in various patterns. To figure out this programming, we also had to learn binary code and hexidecimal. This allowed us to make the series of LEDs count up from 0 to 255 in binary and to flash in a repeating cycle (such as KITT from Knight Rider or a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica). – Michael Coughlin, STEM & Chemistry Teacher
Faculty Spotlight
Our outstanding faculty continues to foster intellectual curiosity and academic development in our one-on-one classroom setting. This season we have again worked with a record number of schools from along the east coast and mid-west, and welcomed, so far, 51 students to the Academy.
- Carolina Alvarado
- Luis Avendano
- Mark Baker
- Michael Coughlin
- Helen Fields
- Amy Gallese
- Joesef Kranz
- Kathleen Leahy
- Joanne Leone
- Joseph Mueller
- Simon Walsh
- Blake Winter
Academic Podium
- Jack Armbruster, West Dover VT
- Ben Bush, Sea Cliff NY
- Maddie Bush, Sea Cliff NY
- Ashley Byron, Westfield NJ
- Chip Coffin, Ridgefield CT
- Molly Croft, New York NY
- Charlie Duffy, Millstone TWP, NJ
- Zach Ferry, Pennington NJ
- Nick Ford, Southampton NY
- Anna Lee Geoghan, Hampton Bay NY
- Alyssa Kimble, White Plains NY
- Oliver Leonard, Riverside CT
- Patrick Leonard, Riverside CT
- Griffin Mandino, West Dover VT
- Erin McHugh, Fairfield CT
- Jillian Pastore, Ridgefield CT
- Hailey Rebak, Franklin Lakes NJ
- Logan Severance, New Canaan CT
- Pierre Verville, Bath ME