The five million passengers who go through the Reno-Tahoe International Airport each year all pass by an imposing 20-foot bronze skier carving a turn around a gate. The sculpture, "Giant Slalom," was created in 1996 by Douglas Van Howd as a scholarship project for the University of Nevada's ski teams. Those teams produced four Olympians, five individual national titles and 39 All-America honors. The sculpture celebrating those accomplishments has figured prominently at the airport since 2012, two years after Nevada cut its NCAA team for the second time.
The irony of this was not lost on former Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, president of the university since 2020. In July 2022, when the University of Nevada acquired Sierra Nevada University, a small, private college on the shores of Lake Tahoe, Sandoval announced that the university would preserve SNU's ski team, the Goliaths, on skiing's USCSA (U.S. Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association) circuit. The move would bring skiing back to Nevada as one of its 17 NCAA sports.
"With today's announcement, we honor the outstanding legacy of our past Wolf Pack ski teams and commit to the promise of an exciting future," said Sandoval at the time. When, after a year, the team's coach quit unexpectedly, Nevada rebounded by hiring Cameron Smith, who brings energy, experience and connections through the sport.
Bolstered by local talent, the larger Tahoe skiing community, the rising relevance of college skiing, unprecedented university support and a stalwart fan base that has rallied hard for each of the team's recoveries, it's a good bet that Wolf Pack skiing is here to stay.
When Nevada athletic director Stephanie Rempe addressed the 500 supporters, alumni and local Olympians who attended the Ski Ball fundraiser last October, she also clarified the ultimate goal: to win a national championship. It would be Nevada's first in any sport.(And the Nevada team that has come closest to winning that prize was the ski team—15 years before such a title even existed.)
Key Players Early On
Nevada's ski team was started in 1936 by students Wayne Poulsen and his best friend, Martin Arrouge. Poulsen, a Far West jumping champion, was adept at all the skiing disciplines: jumping, cross-country and the newly popular Alpine events of downhill and slalom.(North America's first downhill and slalom races were run by the Dartmouth Outing Club in 1927 and '28, respectively). In 1937, Nevada officially recognized the skiers as a university team, though the athletes had to pay their own way to meets, ranging from Washington to Utah to Yosemite.
According to his son Russell Poulsen, after graduating in 1938, Poulsen stayed on to coach the team to third place in the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Ski Union, and Arrouge represented the U.S. in the Pan American Ski Championships.
By 1939, the university threw its weight behind the winter carnival that Poulsen organized. The Nevada Winter Carnival, on the slopes of Mount Rose, became an annual stop on the Pacific region collegiate tour and one of the premier ski events in the West. Athletes typically competed in all four events, with the top scorer across all four disciplines earning the title of ski meister.
That same year, the budding Nevada ski team beat the perennial champs, the University of Washington Huskies, to clinch the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate title. Though claimed as a national title, at the time there was actually no national sanctioning body for collegiate skiing.
The following year, Poulsen installed the Mount Rose Up-Ski lift (on the slope that would later become Sky Tavern) to offer winter recreation and instruction to the Reno community. Poulsen later bought and developed Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe). He was the first of many Nevada skiers to make a profound influence on the ski world.
Wolves Make Their Mark
Before Nevada had a women's ski team, Reno native Dodie Post (Gann) raced as a member of the Wolf Pack from 1942–47. She became the first Nevadan to make an Olympic team, in 1948, serving as captain, and later competing in the 1952 Winter Games, too.
The University of Nevada hosted skiing's first NCAA championships in 1954, and 10 teams, all from the West, competed. The University of Denver won the event, but Nevada senior Pat Myers plunged 3,000 vertical feet from the summit of Slide Mountain to claim the downhill title, edging out Utah's 1952 Olympian, Darrell Robison. Even while its NCAA appearances were sporadic, the team continued to make its mark. Chelton "Shelly" Leonard served in the army's 10th Mountain Division before coming to Nevada first as competitor, then coach. He led the team to eight Pacific Coast titles and served the sport in myriad roles as instructor, official, administrator and executive.
Dick Dorworth won the Nevada Winter Carnival downhill and ski meister titles as a freshman in 1958, and as a senior he nabbed three podiums at the 1962 NCAA Championships in Squaw Valley. Dorworth then set the speed-skiing world record in 1963 and later became a revered ski journalist. The Nevada Carnival's 1965 ski meister champ, Lane Monroe, went on to coach the 1972 U.S. Olympic Ski Team, then spent decades coaching future champions in Sun Valley, Idaho. Glenn Jobe lettered in both Alpine and Nordic skiing for Nevada from 1971–73, then competed for Team USA in cross-country at the World Championships and in biathlon at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Jobe pioneered the development of Nordic skiing trails and instruction throughout the Tahoe area.
Losing the Homegrown Game
Nevada had a women's team early on. Here's the squad around 1956. UN photo
Despite its mighty contributions, the Nevada ski team never enjoyed the status and coaching continuity of the powerhouse collegiate teams. Top local talent—future Olympians like Jimmie Heuga, Spider Sabich and Ni Orsi—accepted scholarships at the University of Colorado, where coach Bob Beattie had turned CU into the de facto U.S. Ski Team. Even Poulsen's son, Eric, opted to race for the University of Denver, and then qualified for the 1972 Olympics.
Meanwhile, Nevada's athletes scraped together money to attend NCAA championships. Even while an enthusiastic booster group of alumni, ski area owners, casinos, local businesses and die-hard skiers worked hard to fill the funding gaps, internal friction with Nevada's athletic department—headed by non-skiers—kept skiing a low priority. Alpine skiers from Tahoe have participated in every one of the 16 Winter Olympics since 1960, yet none skied for the home college team. Former Wolf Pack skier Mike Shonnard voices the frustration he and his fellow boosters felt watching all that talent over the years not going to UNR (as the team is known locally): "Wayne Poulsen started something for us right at home. Why don't they come?"
Changes in Collegiate Skiing
The reasons went beyond Nevada's own struggles to the changing landscape of college skiing. For safety and logistical reasons, giant slalom replaced downhill in 1976, and ski jumping was eliminated in 1980. Meanwhile, the passage of Title IX in 1972 mandated equal athletic opportunities for women. Starting in 1993, the NCAA hosted its first combined national championships, split evenly between men and women, Nordic and Alpine. Schools required to add women's teams faced increased program costs.
National teams became better organized and funded, luring top athletes with the prospect of World Cup and Olympic competitions, while the World Pro Skiing Tour lured them with cash. Furthermore, carnival races were not FIS sanctioned, so were no longer a path upward. As the expense of fielding teams caught up with the Western schools, and the relevance of college skiing faded, many schools dropped their NCAA ski programs. The University of Denver, despite winning 14 national titles, eliminated its ski team in 1983. Others would follow, including Nevada in 1987.
The Challenge of Fundraising
But the boosters never gave up. The group incorporated as a 501(c)(3) and helped support Nevada's USCSA club team. Bill Killebrew, whose family owned Heavenly ski resort until 1991, remembers one year when the athletic director had redlined the budget for skiing. He relates that, along with Nick Badami, longtime owner of Alpine Meadows, "We just said 'No! Nevada has to have a ski team.'" His mother, Ellie Killebrew, a Nevada native and UNR graduate, chaired fundraisers, including black-tie galas attended by her philanthropist friends from San Francisco. "When you're trying to make money, you have to bring money to the fundraisers and that's what Mom would do," says Killebrew. At one such event in 1993, the family's $50,000 gift to the ski program, the largest in its history, kicked off a campaign to build a $1 million ski-team scholarship endowment. Nevada's ski team returned to NCAA status in 1995.
A Rise in Relevance
Just then, college skiing overall was making a major comeback. University races became FIS sanctioned and roster spots were highly coveted. Fast skiers from around the globe jumped on opportunities to continue their ski racing development while also getting an education subsidized by college scholarships. Former Denver star Otto Tschudi successfully resurrected DU's team in 1993 and secured its future by finding support for several endowed scholarship funds. By 2000, with a mostly foreign-born squad, the team again won the national championship.
Nevada, too, attracted foreign athletes, like four-time NCAA Nordic champ Katerina Hanusova and 2002 giant slalom champ Tommi Viirret. Their performances boosted Nevada to sixth, out of 23 teams, at the 2002 championships. From 2001 to 2009, Nevada was solidly in the top half of the standings. Nevertheless, when the economic downturn of 2008 hit, the ski team was again on the chopping block. In 2010, just as NCAA skiers were breaking through at the World Cup level, Nevada cut its team.
Another Rebirth
When university president Sandoval gave the green light, the boosters were ready. Zach Fretz and Nick Cohee are both current directors of the Nevada skiing boosters. Cohee had been a top U.S. junior racer in Tahoe and wanted to ski for Nevada when he went to college in 2008, when Tahoe's top skiers were populating the NCAA. "None of these guys went to Nevada," says Cohee, who raced for Utah and was twice named an All-American. "There were just poor efforts for recruiting Americans that were fast." Fretz was on Nevada's team when it was disbanded in 2010. "It was life changing," he explains. "A lot of us that are involved still were on that team, and we want to make sure it doesn't happen again."
The pair helped rally the community, raising $100,000 at the inaugural Ski Ball fundraiser in 2022 and rebuilding dormant relationships throughout the area. Losing Nevada's high-level college athletes and competitions had also been a big hit for the development of Tahoe athletes of all ages. The boosters and the university needed to bridge that rift by engaging donors big and small, including resorts, clubs, parents and athletes. They continued with existing fundraisers—like an annual ski swap and selling recognition plaques on the airport skier statue as well as smaller statuettes of it—while exploring ways to tap into Reno's booming economy.
Championship Commitment
This time, the team has full support within the university. Rempe, the athletic director, started her job just as the SNU acquisition took place and immediately embraced the ski team: "It's almost egregious not to have skiing," she says. "It's part of the culture here. It's part of the economy. And it just makes a tremendous amount of sense."
Tahoe's world-class ski areas provide the Wolf Pack with an embarrassment of riches for training. All are less than an hour's drive from campus, and all have vibrant youth ski clubs. With NCAA skiing a proven path to the pinnacle of ski racing (17 NCAA grads raced on the World Cup last season), these kids aspire to collegiate rosters.
Already, local Olympian Bill Hudson has seen the team's effect on the programs he oversees at Palisades Tahoe. "It's great for our kids to see those athletes up close as they train and race here," he notes, "and it has been a boost for the ski racing community to have UNR back." Being the rallying point for Far West skiing will help Coach Smith rebuild an ecosystem of success. He plans to recruit two men and two women this year, for a team roster of 16. Already, he has several local athletes, and while right now the program needs to find championship-ready skiers, Smith envisions that they will soon come from the homegrown talent nurtured by the team.
Next up: Nordic
To compete for a national title, Nevada needs a Nordic team. Fielding a full Alpine and Nordic roster costs $1.4 million per year. After scholarships, the team will still need around $800,000 every year from outside sources to cover operating expenses. To do that requires multi-year pledges or legacy gifts like the $400,000 Killebrew Scholarship Endowment that remains the ski team's largest single endowment. With funding, a Nordic team could be in place by the 2025–26 season.
Then Smith can really get down to business. Nevada enjoys the benefits of the Western Undergraduate Exchange program, which provides tuition savings to out-of-state students, giving Smith leeway to recruit from strong programs throughout the West. "It's a huge opportunity. You could grow a team—an American team—very fast," says Smith.
Rempe cites a stat that 80 percent of U.S. Olympians now come from the college ranks. "It's the perfect training ground for Olympics," she says. She points to the Wolf Pack's Katerina Hanusova-Nash, who has competed in five Olympics across cross-country skiing and mountain biking for her native Czech Republic. "There's nothing that duplicates the life lessons that you learn from sports, especially college sports," she adds. Because so few programs are available, college skiing provides both athletes and their school with valuable opportunities. There are 10 NCAA skiing programs in the West, and only five with both Alpine and Nordic squads. "The fact that skiing fits so well in this community, it's a no-brainer," says Rempe.
Philanthropy and genuine support for both the legacy and the future of a local treasure is a big piece of the puzzle. "Our hope and expectation with skiing is that we're able to tap into the ski community that values the sport of skiing," Rempe says. She notes that the 16 roster spots Nevada offers today are 16 more opportunities for kids to keep ski racing while getting an education.
When you fly into Reno you will first see the mountains, then, at the airport, the statue, staking its claim to Nevada's ski team. Winning a national championship may seem a long way off, but considering the journey so far, it's in sight.
This article is reprinted from Skiing History magazine which is published by the International Skiing History Association. ISHA is a nonprofit which relies on membership and donations to support its research and publication of Skiing History. The author, Edith Thys Morgan, is a freelance writer and  two time Olympian who grew up racing in the Lake Tahoe area.
JUST DON'T CALL IT "UNR"
While within the ski-racing community and among locals the University of Nevada is known as UNR, the moniker rankles university leadership. It's only since 1969 that the Las Vegas campus—established as an outpost known as Nevada Southern in 1951—was officially recognized as an independent University of Nevada. "You go anywhere in the country, and nobody knows what UNR is," says Athletic Director Stephanie Rempe. In practice, the rival UNLV Rebels use "UNR" on the scoreboard. Says Rempe, "The way we look at it, we're the University of Nevada, because we have been for 150 years."
