By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
This winter season is smiling on David Mills, who started the Scarborough Middle School Nordic and Alpine racing team last month. Mills is no stranger to the sport, having coached the Falmouth team in from 1994 to 1995, and with the help of Rod Sutkowski, Kurt Jepson and David Summerson, all avid skiers and approved U.S. Skiing Association (USSA) coaches, the team has nearly completed their first season.
The program is paid for by the fundraising efforts of participants and their parents, who also pay a one time fee of $200 to join the club.
“We have ski swaps, pie sales, bottle drives and whatever else we can do to raise funds,” Mills said.
The team is not currently sponsored by the school administration, although Mills said he has been communicating with the school in hopes of acquiring school buses to help commute to the mountains as the team grows.
“It’s definitely something I’m in support of,” Scarborough (High) School Athletic Director Chris Moroe said. “They’re doing everything the right way.”
Moroe said it is important for clubs hoping to be school sponsored to start at a low level so athletes can develop the skills to compete with other class A once the team is part of the school league.
“We would be doing the kids a disservice if we threw them to the lions,” Moroe said.
For this reason, Mills said the team, which is comprised of 17 middle school students, primarily focuses on developing skills so that they may be competitive later on, Mills said.
“I’m not putting kids into a race until I know they’re ready,” he said. “There’s no sense sending a kid through a course if they can’t keep up.”
The team practices at Shawnee Peak on Tuesday afternoons and usually race about once a week with the Maine Junior Ski Club, coordinated by Kathy Bartley, a language arts teacher at Lake Region Middle School in Naples. Bartley said Scarborough is the latest club to join the organization, which now represents 36 different schools from the middle of the state. Bartley predicted that there would be more than 400 participants in the final races this year; each school can only send eight racers.
“Twelve years ago we had to split into two different divisions,” she said. “There would be 160 kids trying to slalom down a single course. It just didn’t work very well.”
Bartley said the Scarborough club was one of nine teams that participated in Nordic and Alpine racing.
There are two different types of Alpine racing, Mills explained; a slalom, a tight course where skiers can knock down gates, and a giant slalom, which is a longer course with larger gates. Mills said the middle school racers can reach speeds of 25 mph.
 “It doesn’t sound like very much, but it really is for the kids,” he said.
The Nordic, or cross country program is primarily coached by Jepson and can be a classical race, where racers are in a fast track, or a skate race outside of a track, Mills said.
Mills said that the relatively short racing season, which started early last month, would be over soon and Scarborough will be sending several athletes to the Maine Junior Ski Club finals towards the middle of this month including Abigail Mills, Mitch Summerson and Lance Sutkowski, who have all finished in the top ten in past races.