The bears have gone into hibernation. It is dark by 5 o’clock; the mountains are snow-covered, and most importantly skiing at AHS has officially started.

This year, there are 41 skiers on the roster.

“It’s the biggest team we have ever had,” said Craig Carlson, who coaches the Alpine ski team with Stephanie Nixon. Carlson and Nixon both said their two main goals for the seasons are to have fun and also to “qualify as many athletes as we can for the state championship. We have never gone below 50 percent.”

Aspen’s biggest rival in years past has been Summit High School, in Breckenridge.   Everyone expects Summit to be tough to beat this year as well.

“It’s a rivalry, but it’s a friendly rivalry,” said Nixon. “The Summit Nordic team is really good and their alpine team is really good too.”

Nixon, who is currently on maternity leave from her other job at AHS as an art teacher, is especially excited about the large turnout of talented freshman girl skiers and the girls’ team as a whole.

“We have a lot of freshman, a ton of freshman girls,” said Nixon. “It’s going to be a solid girls team, like scary-solid.”

Leading that “scary-solid” girls team is senior Haley Hopkinson, who is one of the captains of the ski team this year.

“I am looking forward to skiing with Haley,” said freshman skier Juliette Woodrow. “She knows how to bring a group of people together. I hope that she can lead us to another state championship this year.”

Hopkinson hopes that this season will be amazing and she is looking forward to leading and racing with the largest team that AHS has ever had.

“This year as captain, I want to restore Aspen’s rightful place at 1^st place at state championships this year,” said an enthusiastic Hopkinson.

There are 11 seniors, including Hopkinson; on the roster this year and both Carlson and Nixon expressed hope, love and a little nostalgia for all of them.

“I’d like to see all the seniors do really well because it’s their last year skiing for their school,” said Nixon. “I’d like to see good things from Max Marolt. He has a really good chance to win the Skimeister title in the state championships, in both Nordic and Alpine. I’d also like to see Haley Hopkinson do well too, because she’s a senior girl and it means a lot to her.”

In case you don’t know what a Skimeister is, it is a so called “super athlete” who competes in all of the categories of Alpine skiing as well as all of the categories of Nordic skiing.

“We have a couple Skimeisters this year: Christian Lewis, Max Marolt, Scotty Houtsma, Graham Houtsma, Zane Heald,” said Carlson.       “And we have one girl, Sophie Stuber. She’s the first girl I have had doing Skimeister and it’s really cool,”

Hopefully all of the Ski team and also the few Skimeisters will do well this year and lead the school to another state championship title or titles. Everyone has high hopes for this season, but especially the coaches of the ski team who grew up skiing and knows what it’s like to compete.

Both Carlson and Nixon were ski racers when they were young but they did not exactly grow up in ski towns. Nixon’s hometown is Detroit.  “I grew up skiing at Mount Holly, which is 500 feet of vertical, which has the same vertical of my driveway now,” she said.

Carlson grew up in Denver and raced in high school and on the club ski team at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He moved to Aspen in 2005 to train here but fell off his mountain bike one summer, broke his hip and decided to quit racing and begin coaching. After his injury, he was forced to give up his dream of becoming a professional ski racer, but with his injury also came a blessing. After the injury he became a professional mountain biker. He now spends his summers traveling from one mountain bike competition to another, and then during the winter he coaches and skis here. “It’s the perfect life,” Carlson said.

Of course both coaches dream of winning many state championship titles this year. AHS has won 5 title since Carlson started coaching here, 6 years ago. Three of those were won by the boys’ team and the other two were won by the girls. This year the team is hoping that a large crowd will show up for their one and only home race on January 24^th at Highlands. Coincidently, there is no school that day so it would be great if we all got out there to support yet another fantastic AHS sports team. I know I will be watching.