Reinstated, ski jumping encounters steep hill

“When the NCAA eliminated jumping, that was the death knell of the sport in the United States,’’ said Mark Sullivan, president of the USCSA. “A wider base was dissolved. If you were a kid who jumped, you were either good enough to make the national team or you gave it up.’’

John Fulton captained the University of New Hampshire jumpers in the 1970s. Upon graduation, he was hired to coach the team, unaware a ban was in the pipeline. Unlike other sports that go dormant, he said ski jumping was particularly endangered because of its infrastructure.

“Once the program was lost, it was a liability to keep the ski jumps,’’ Fulton said. “They bulldozed them for insurance reasons.’’

In the early 1900s, almost every Northeast community with a sizable hill had a public jump. In 1913, Dartmouth College hosted the nation’s first college competition. By 1922, New England was a major player, with world-class facilities like the Olympic-size Harris Hill in Brattleboro, Vt., and the country’s tallest ski jump, a 198-footer in Berlin, N.H. Each venue regularly hosted the US nationals into the 1970s.

In 1980 — two months after the Lake Placid Winter Olympics — the ski rules committee of the NCAA voted to eliminate jumping. The stated issues had to do with expenses, liability, and a lack of qualified athletes.

But Sullivan and Fulton said factional bickering really drove the decision. They both recalled a behind-the-scenes conflict that centered on schools that were weak in jumping wanting to axe that discipline, because the way ski meets were scored under NCAA rules, a team’s Alpine and Nordic points were combined.

Sullivan explained the USCSA doesn’t insist teams be funded directly through athletic departments, like the NCAA does. So the USCSA can recognize clubs and nonvarsity teams from smaller colleges, and it even allows NCAA-affiliated schools to join, enabling 4,500 athletes from 180 institutions to compete in ski and snowboard events nationwide.

Bringing back ski jumping started off as a personal crusade for some members within the USCSA. But once the idea made it onto the agenda at the annual board meeting, the vote was unanimous.