CARRABASSETT VALLEY – Every high-profile endeavor has its cradle of champions.

Hollywood spawns actors, or at least extends its alluring arms to aspiring ones. Pennsylvania steel towns have graced us with quarterbacks named Marino, Namath and Kelly. The ghosts of presidents past, present and future hover the hallowed halls of Ivy League universities.

Skiing’s equivalent has grown with the subtlety of an avalanche over the last quarter-century, in humble surroundings that resemble a misplaced ski lodge at a bend along Route 27 in Franklin County, Maine, an hour south of the Canadian border.

One hundred twenty-five students from nine states and four nations have converged upon Carrabassett Valley Academy; some with a desire to follow the trail blazed by legends Seth Wescott, Jeremy Jones and Bode Miller, others, motivated simply by the chance to feed mind, body and spirit while skiing or snowboarding to their hearts’ content.

“There’s not really much else to do,” said Ben Morse, a sophomore who has lived in the shadow of Sugarloaf/USA since age 2.

‘Do’ being the operative word, the most active of verbs that describes every moment of CVA life. Students here do ski, do study, do travel, do excel, do attend the college of their choice, do become prominent doctors, teachers or accountants if not Olympic or X Games champions. They are the quintessence of the oft-oxymoronic label, student-athlete.

Four current CVA skiers and Maine natives – Morse, Kristin Waddle, Katie Houser and Emma Coffin – will compete in the U.S. Alpine Championships at Sugarloaf, beginning with Friday’s FIS downhill.

CVA alumni have left an indelible impact on that event. Miller, crowned World Cup champion for the second time last week, skied his way onto the U.S. Ski Team through the national race at his home hill in the mid-1990s. Both Miller and Kirsten Clark won multiple U.S. championships and now inspire the second generation of athletes, some of whom pay more than $35,000 a year to soak up the ambiance at the Little School That Could, and does.

“It’s nice to know that this school can definitely produce people,” said Coffin, a transplant from Cumberland, “but it’s more of an individual focus than ‘I want to be that person.’ “

Ahead of the curve

The year was 1982. The afterglow of hockey’s “Miracle On Ice” had faded across two winters’ time, and Phil Mahre promptly emerged as the poster boy for cold-weather sports in the United States.

No American, male or female, had ever previously won a World Cup overall title. Mahre, the more celebrated of two fraternal skiing twins from Yakima, Wash., was celebrating the second of his three consecutive championships.

While ski enthusiasts above the fruited plain openly discussed who would be next, a forward-thinking board of trustees living in the shadow of Sugarloaf was more concerned with what was next.

Neither public nor prep school educators understood the concept, at first.

“I think ski academies in general were new at the time,” said Marie Leary, a 1989 CVA graduate and now the school’s director of academic programs. “So it was, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Do you have behavioral issues?’ I think they associated it more with an Outward Bound type program as opposed to those of us who were really looking to balance that athletic and academic piece.”

If ski schools in general swam against the mainstream, there was even greater reluctance to accept the radical new disciplines that the maverick, rural upstart immediately embraced.

The words ‘freestyle’ and ‘snowboard’ were becoming part of the Alpine lexicon, if not finding a place in the traditionalist’s heart. Practitioners of those cult events were perceived as a nuisance, rating curious glances from most and angry mumbles from many.

“Part of how CVA has grown is that we’ve always tried to be innovative in our programming,” said headmaster John Ritzo.

CVA was one the first major ski academies to offer snowboard and freeride programs.

With its ALPS (Alpine Leadership Pursuits for Skiers and Riders) program, the academy provides students a chance to study abroad in Canada, France, New Zealand, Chile and Mexico while exploring the big mountain craze.

“There are some (schools) that are still very much Alpine-oriented,” Ritzo said. “We’ve always listened to the kids and watched what they were doing. You can always tell the next big sport by what the kids are doing when they’re fooling around. We’ll say, ‘OK, let’s keep an eye on that, because that’s probably where the sport is headed.’ Freestyle was a great example of that. Kids saw what other kids were doing on snowboards, and they wanted to do it on skis.”

Wescott provided validation, if anyone needed it, with his 2006 Olympic boardercross gold medal in Turin.

Brenda Petzold and Emily Cook were pioneers in women’s freestyle. Jones is recognized as the world’s premier big mountain rider.

“What’s great to me is that the 10 Olympians are in all the sports. It’s Alpine, but it’s also freestyle and snowboarding,” said Kate Webber Punderson, also a 1989 CVA grad and current director of development and alumni relations. “It’s always been in our character and our culture to be risk-takers in that way … to see what’s the next best thing and going for it. It keeps us fresh.”

Natural and human resources

Life at CVA sells itself, even without the cadre of celebrities who once made their own sandwiches in the dining hall and sweated out exams in makeshift classrooms.

Sure, the nearest non-blinking traffic light is 45 minutes southeast. Ditto, the distance of McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and other creature comforts.

If you’re a skier or rider born and reared in the land of pine trees, however, life in the Valley is without peer. You benefit from rugged, next-door terrain that is viewed as a veritable Great White Way: If you can learn the craft here, you can apply it anywhere.

“I think a lot of it is the type of skiers that the mountain breeds,” Morse said. “CVA has been key in all those success stories in giving them the opportunity. They’re still the ones performing, but CVA provided the training and the teachers that are able to work with you to do that.”

The school’s image continues to grow in tangible ways. An expansive Anti-Gravity Center for year-round training opened in 2001. With a $7 million fund-raising campaign nearly complete, CVA began its gradual move to a 22-acre acquisition along the Sugarloaf access road by opening the new Murfey Hall dormitory last fall.

Behind the scenes, the school has long maximized its resources. Teaching and coaching faculty are separate entities at CVA, making it unique among ski academies.

And faculty are fiercely loyal. Punderson and Leary are among 11 former students to return as staff members. Ritzo is in his 22nd year at the school. Joan McWilliams Dolan, director of athletics and dean of faculty, moved here a year before him.

Life by the book

“They’re choosing the path less traveled,” Dolan of said of CVA students. “They’re not in a traditional high school setting.”

No, indeed.

A typical winter day begins at 7:30 a.m. with two one-hour classes. Then it’s off to the mountain for four hours of athletic time that may also incorporate academics.

“I was just studying for a calculus exam,” Houser said after catching the bus back from her midday excursion.

Classes continue in the late afternoon, followed by dinner hour, another study hall, some brief unwinding and a mandatory lights-out check at 10 p.m.

Many students travel as much as two to three days per week to compete, in-season, during which time they’re responsible for budgeting money and time, preparing meals, and study habits that now may include teleporting to class by way of “CVATube” videos or downloading notes through interactive classroom “smart boards.”

Students and teachers swear by the rampant success of the academic program, all keenly aware that 10 Olympians and 23 national team members out of more than 1,000 graduates are miniscule numbers.

More than 90 percent of graduates advance directly to college. Recent acceptances include Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Bates, Colby, Bowdoin, Colorado and Wisconsin.

“Not only do our kids get into good colleges, but they do well once they’re there, and they continue and do well in life,” Dolan said. “Really it is about creating that complete person. Even though I’m the athletic director, I get it that everybody at some point in their lives becomes an ex-athlete.”

Of course, the athletic piece of that puzzle will draw the most attention over the next 10 days, as it has all winter.

Across all disciplines, 40 current students and three alumni are represented at end-of-the-season national competitions.

“Kids begin to believe that they can do it,” Ritzo said. “They see these older kids come up through and get to the top, so they know it’s very do-able. They know the opportunity is there. I think that’s what CVA does: It provides the opportunity.”