Get Recruited - The Alpine and Nordic Skiing Scholarship Playbook (2026 Edition)

You are going to spend $40,000 to $80,000 on ski racing over four years of high school.

Race entries. Club fees. Equipment. Travel. Hotel rooms four hours from home on weekends your family will never get back.

The question is not whether you spend that money. You already are.

The question is whether any of it turns into a scholarship offer.

Most families walk away with nothing. Here's exactly why.

It is not talent. The athletes who land NCAA ski scholarships are not always the fastest ones on the mountain.

It is process. And timing. And knowing what college ski coaches are looking for before you send the first email.

Coaches have FIS point thresholds in their head before they open a single recruiting message. They know which events they are attending six months in advance. They start filling roster spots earlier than most families realize recruiting has even begun.

There are roughly 30 NCAA ski programs in the entire country. Ten at D1. The scholarship pools are small. And athletes from Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Canada are competing for the same roster spots as your child.

By the time most families start researching the process, the money is already half gone.

The families who secure scholarship money are not richer. They are not luckier. They do not have faster kids.

They started earlier. They knew the system. And they worked it.

This playbook is that system — built exclusively for Alpine and Nordic families.

Every generic NCAA recruiting guide on the market was written for every sport at once. There is no FIS points section in a basketball guide. No EISA carnival calendar in a soccer guide. No NorAm Cup strategy anywhere except here.

This playbook was written for one athlete: yours. A skier. Everything in it — every threshold, every template, every timeline, every tool — is built around the way ski recruiting actually works.

What's inside:

This is a digital guide — delivered instantly as a PDF download. The NCAA Recruiting Toolkit is included as an Excel file. Both are yours to keep, print, and reference throughout the entire recruiting process.

The Landscape — Every D1 and D2 NCAA ski program. The EISA and RMISA conference structures. How rosters are built. The full map so you start with an accurate picture of what exists and what is realistic for your athlete.

FIS Points: The Currency of Ski Recruiting — FIS points are the one number that determines whether a coach opens your email or archives it. Exactly how the calculation works, why field quality matters more than finishing position, and the exact thresholds coaches screen for at every division level.

Grade-by-Grade Timeline — Freshman year through signing day. Every NCAA contact date, every evaluation window, every action and when it needs to happen. The single most expensive mistake families make is starting too late. This eliminates that mistake.

The Program Directory — Every D1 and D2 program with conference, location, scholarship limits, and recruiting site. D3 and NESCAC programs with the financial context that makes them worth serious consideration.

Contacting Coaches — The subject line format coaches actually open. The email structure that gets read. The follow-up timing that keeps you on the radar without burning the relationship. The tracking system that makes sure no program goes cold.

The Highlight Video — Exactly what Alpine and Nordic coaches are evaluating, how to structure the short cut and the full cut, and the technical standards that separate a video that opens a conversation from one that gets archived.

Campus Visits — What coaches are watching during the visit that families never realize. The questions that surface information the brochure will never tell you. The red flags. The post-visit debrief that tells you what the visit actually meant.

Scholarships and Financial Aid — How equivalency scholarships work, how to stack athletic and academic and need-based aid, how to read an award letter correctly, and how to negotiate an offer without putting a single thing at risk.

GPA and NCAA Eligibility — The 16 core course requirement, the D1 sliding scale, the 10/7 rule, and amateurism certification for ski athletes. Mistakes made in Grade 9 cannot always be corrected. This chapter prevents them.

Canadian and International Athletes — Transcript evaluation by province, FIS prize money amateurism rules, Alpine Canada funding, CSS Profile deadlines at private schools, and visa timing. Every step international families need — in the exact order it needs to happen.

Plan B Paths — Coaches not responding. Spring of Grade 12 approaching. How to diagnose why and what to do about it. Post-graduate years, walk-on strategy, D3 and NESCAC reframed as primary options, D2 as the most underused path in ski recruiting.

Social Media and NIL — What coaches find when they search your athlete's name before they respond to the email. How to audit every platform before outreach begins. What NIL realistically looks like for collegiate ski athletes and the compliance rules that matter.

Nine appendix tools — FIS points target reference, program comparison tracker, coach outreach log, five email templates, athlete resume template, video planning checklist, campus visit checklist, financial aid comparison worksheet, and a grade-by-grade master checklist.

Plus: The NCAA Recruiting Toolkit — included with every purchase.

A complete Excel workbook with six built-in tabs:

Program Research tracker. Coach Outreach Log with automatic overdue alerts — red rows mean a follow-up is past due, green rows mean an offer is waiting for a decision. 4-School Cost Calculator with 4-year net cost projections and year-over-year adjustments. Decision Scorecard that scores every program across five categories and color-codes the results. Campus Visit Log. Athlete Profile reference card.

No other ski recruiting guide comes with this. No other ski recruiting guide comes close.

The Guarantee

Work through this playbook for 30 days.

If you do not have a targeted program list matched to your athlete's FIS profile, an active coach outreach plan with programs in your tracker, and a recruiting timeline you are executing — email us and we will refund every dollar.

No forms. No explanation. No questions asked.

The math is not complicated.

This playbook and Toolkit cost less than one night at a race weekend hotel.

A partial D1 scholarship is worth $20,000 to $80,000 per year.

A properly stacked package combining athletic, academic, and need-based aid can cover nearly the full cost of attendance.

The families who secure that money did not have faster kids.

They had better information. Earlier.

That is what you are buying today.