Featured Picture: Tony DiGangi, Winterfell Alpin coach
Written by Nick Unkovskoy and Sophia Tozzi
Within the extremely aggressive world of alpine ski racing, school snowboarding is usually neglected as a viable improvement pathway to the very best ranges of the game. Whereas a number of athletes have efficiently progressed from NCAA competitors to the World Cup, the collegiate pipeline is often criticized as an inconsistent and difficult route for athlete improvement.
For a lot of collegiate ski racers, the difficulty isn’t an absence of expertise, however an absence of structural assist. NCAA packages face strict rules that restrict coaching outdoors the aggressive season, leaving athletes liable for securing their very own on-snow coaching through the offseason and early fall. Through the winter, NCAA racing gives a powerful degree of competitors, but it surely doesn’t absolutely replicate the depth, journey calls for, or depth of the NorAm circuit—a vital proving floor for U.S.-based athletes with worldwide ambitions.
This problem is especially acute for East Coast packages, the place smaller budgets and restricted staffing usually stop groups from supporting a full NorAm schedule. In consequence, athletes might miss key begins or attend races with out full institutional backing, forcing them to independently handle journey, lodging, and training assist. This fragmented system creates a major developmental hole at a stage the place constant NorAm publicity is usually decisive.
What Is Winterfell Alpin—and Why It Issues
Winterfell Alpin was based to handle this actual hole within the alpine ski racing improvement pipeline. This system was created by Tony DiGangi and Carolyn Beckedorff, two professionals whose mixed expertise spans elite teaching, collegiate athletics, and high-performance psychological coaching.
Tony DiGangi is a veteran alpine ski coach who has labored with quite a few profitable athletes all through his profession. Over the previous decade, he has targeted closely on collegiate ski racing, first at Middlebury Faculty and extra not too long ago at Colby Faculty, the place he’s recognized for his disciplined, strategic teaching fashion and emphasis on psychological resilience.
Carolyn Beckedorff brings a singular perspective to this system. A former Division I soccer participant and skier on the College of New Hampshire, she later turned the pinnacle dealer at a Boston-based hedge fund. Immediately, she works as a psychological efficiency coach whereas co-directing Winterfell Alpin alongside Tony.
Tony witnessed the shortcomings of the NCAA-to-professional transition firsthand whereas teaching athletes akin to Tim Gavett (’22), Justin Alkier (’22), and Eric Arvidsson (’21), all of whom aspired to ski professionally after school. He acknowledged that collegiate athletes with elite potential wanted a extra constant and structured assist system—significantly at higher-level occasions just like the NorAm sequence.
In 2023, when Tony and Carolyn’s son, Harrison DiGangi, enrolled at Colby Faculty and joined the alpine crew, the chance to formalize this imaginative and prescient turned clear. That very same yr, Winterfell Alpin was formally launched.
Winterfell’s mission is evident: to empower elite collegiate and post-collegiate athletes on their journey from NCAA competitors to continental cups and in the end the World Cup by offering high-performance coaching and assist that enhances their present packages. By providing race-day teaching, preseason coaching, and logistical assist at occasions many faculties can’t attend, Winterfell successfully bridges the hole between NCAA racing and elite worldwide competitors.
Affect on Present Athletes
One athlete who has seen rapid advantages from Winterfell’s assist is Benjamin Brown, a junior at Dartmouth Faculty who has labored with this system since its inception in 2023. After lacking his freshman season as a consequence of harm, Brown delivered a standout rookie yr on the NCAA circuit, ending on the GS podium in all however one EISA race, together with a victory on the Dartmouth Carnival. He capped the season with a second-place end in Big Slalom on the NCAA Championships on his residence hill at Dartmouth Skiway.
Brown has carried that momentum into the 2026–27 season, opening with two top-eight finishes in NorAm Big Slalom races at Beaver Creek, Colorado, and not too long ago incomes a third-place end on the St. Lawrence Carnival at Whiteface Mountain.
Brown credit Winterfell Alpin with serving to maintain his development each in school racing and on the NorAm circuit. “NCAA ski groups are geared particularly towards the faculty season,” he defined. “They don’t have to get on snow as early. However snowboarding is greater than only a school sport—it’s a global sport. Winterfell actually helps with early-season coaching and gives assist at races that school groups don’t attend.”
Past logistics, Brown emphasizes the professionalism Winterfell brings to its coaching camps. “Each time I get to one among their camps, it reorients my mindset. It jogs my memory the place my focus and energy must be if I wish to ski on the subsequent degree.”
His expertise displays the broader position Winterfell was designed to play: working within the house between collegiate {and professional} ski racing, permitting athletes to take care of momentum past the NCAA season whereas aligning their coaching and mindset with the realities of elite-level competitors.
A Confirmed Improvement Pathway
When requested what moments have reaffirmed Winterfell’s impression, Carolyn Beckendorf pointed to at least one athlete specifically. “The apparent reply is Nolan Sweeney making the nationwide crew,” she mentioned. “That’s proof to me that it is a improvement pathway that has been missed again and again.”
For Sweeney, Winterfell’s assist arrived at a pivotal second. After years of accidents and interrupted improvement throughout his early FIS profession, collegiate ski racing provided him an opportunity to reset. “I had a troublesome few years with well being points and accidents that stored me on and off snow,” Sweeney mentioned. After a niche yr, he joined the Colby Faculty ski crew not sure if he was bodily or mentally prepared to totally commit once more.
Faculty racing gave Sweeney the time and construction he wanted to rebuild, and Winterfell turned a essential extension of that course of. He credit this system with offering “national-team-level preseason construction,” together with coaching blocks in Chile and Norway.
Equally necessary was the emotional and psychological assist. “I used to be exhausted and burnt out,” Sweeney admitted. “To have a gaggle of coaches utterly decide to me and consider in me modified every part. Winterfell helped me consider once more—not simply ski sooner, however turn out to be a happier particular person.”
This season marks Sweeney’s first with the Stifel U.S. Ski Workforce, the place he’s concentrating on NorAm and Europa Cup competitors in Big Slalom and Tremendous-G. He not too long ago earned his first World Cup begin within the Alta Badia Big Slalom, a milestone that underscores each his resurgence and the effectiveness of the pathway Winterfell Alpin was constructed to offer.
The place Is Winterfell Alpin Headed?
Winterfell Alpin continues to develop organically, guided by athlete wants slightly than a inflexible growth plan. When requested concerning the future, Tony and Carolyn acknowledge uncertainty—however see that as a power slightly than a limitation.
Potential progress areas embrace expanded assist for girls’s NorAm athletes or the evolution right into a extra formal non-public crew. Tony additionally notes that a lot of Winterfell’s authentic athletes are set to graduate from their NCAA packages throughout the subsequent two years, a shift that would naturally reshape this system’s course.
Whereas Winterfell’s future construction might evolve, its mission stays unchanged. This system will proceed to offer high-performance assist for athletes navigating the essential transition from NCAA competitors to elite worldwide ski racing—filling a long-overlooked hole within the alpine improvement pipeline.
