Same school, three siblings

Ida Sargent, 22, is the third Sargent to ski for the Big Green since 2001. She’s having a solid season, finishing third in the national championships in Alaska, and fourth at the Under-23 World Championships in Hinterzarten, Germany. The junior biology major is soaring on the carnival circuit, winning five times, including a team relay and the 15K classic at Dartmouth last weekend.

Eben, a 2005 Dartmouth graduate, led the Sargents’ charge. All three have served as captains (Ida is cocaptain). Elsa, 23, graduated in 2008. She was an All-American and on Dartmouth’s 2007 NCAA championship team. The three were never on the same team at Dartmouth, but Elsa’s career overlapped Eben’s and Ida’s. All three attended North Country Union. After Elsa graduated, Ida went to Burke Mountain Academy.

“I don’t think there was pressure, it was more like a competition for me,’’ said Ida, the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association’s rookie of the year as a freshman. “When we were younger, first it was for me to keep up with them and then stick with them. There wasn’t any pressure from them or my parents to do the same thing. I looked up to both of them and wanted to do what they did.’’

The outdoor-oriented Sargents grew up in a rural Orleans, Vt., farmhouse. Parents Dave and Lindy (a retired engineer and school librarian) started the family skiing on old wooden skis in the woods behind their home on trails they cut themselves.

“They all come from a family of hard-working, intense, straight-shooting Vermonters,’’ says Cami Thompson, women’s cross-country ski coach and director of skiing at Dartmouth. “They all share that.’’

Ruff Patterson, the men’s cross-country ski coach at Dartmouth, described Eben, 27, as a “strong-willed guy and a tinkerer who liked to build things.’’ He’s also an avid ski mountaineer, hiker, and climber, and gave his sisters an insider’s view of college ski racing.

“He ended up working for a ski company designing mountaineering types of skis,’’ said Patterson.

Elsa’s living in Seattle working for a nonprofit land trust and she backcountry skis.