SMALL HILL, BIG DREAMS
On a crisp winter evening at Buck Hill, the lights ignite the snow with a clean, white glow. The Kildow’s Climb rope tow hums steadily, pulling racer after racer back to the top. A young athlete – let’s call her Emma – clicks back into her bindings for another lap. She’s only ten, but her eyes carry the same quiet determination that has lived in the hearts of Buck Hill Ski Racing Team athletes for generations.
Her run will be quick. Buck Hill is not known for long descents or towering summit views. Instead, it is known for something far more meaningful: intentional design, world-class coaching, constant progression, and a training environment so dialed-in that a tiny hill in Burnsville, Minnesota has produced Olympians, US Ski Team members, World Cup racers, NCAA champions, and countless national contenders.
Emma may not know all of this yet, but she is learning the rhythms of greatness in a place built specifically for it. And that is what makes Buck Hill different.
The Unique Triunion Structure
While Emma waits for her coach’s signal, much of her future success is already in motion behind the scenes. Buck Hill operates through a three-part structure that does not exist anywhere else in U.S. ski racing: the Hill, the Team, and the Club – three organizations aligned around one mission of “Inspiring athletes to pursue their dreams through ski racing.”
Most mountains, race teams, and booster clubs function independently, balancing different priorities, budgets, and goals. At Buck Hill, the partnership is woven tightly together. The ski area itself, Buck Hill Inc. owns and maintains the facilities, employs the coaching staff, and commits significant resources to snowmaking, grooming, early-season access, lane maintenance, and operational support. Because the Hill and Team share leadership, the focus is never split. When athletes need a surface prepared, a lane widened, or lighting upgrades to push training into the night, the Hill invests directly into those improvements.
The Buck Hill Ski Racing Team, staffed entirely by Hill employees, is responsible for delivering the coaching and curriculum that turn raw talent into refined skill. It is here that athletes like Emma learn the foundational technical elements – position, balance, movement, and touch and feel. As they progress, the Team’s structured Sport Performance Plans guide the athlete’s development with the precision of a long-term blueprint, adjusting training goals, technical focuses, and racing schedules as athletes advance through U12, U14, U16, FIS-level racing, and beyond.
Supporting it all is the Buck Hill Ski Racing Club, a nonprofit fundraising organization that keeps the cost of opportunity within reach. The Club provides financial contributions toward team fees, funds capital improvements, supports camp opportunities, and helps send athletes and coaches to championship races across the country. For families, it means a more affordable pathway; for the Team, it means stability; for athletes, it means access.
Together, the Hill, the Team, and the Club create a structure that accelerates athlete development in a way few programs can match.
The Making of a Champion
Emma finishes her run, skis to her coach, and listens as he breaks down her timing into simple, actionable steps. She nods, visualizes the course again, and hurries up the rope tow for another lap. These micro-moments, lap after lap after lap, are where Buck Hill racers are made.
By the time Emma reaches her teenage years, her training environment will have grown with her. Strength and conditioning programs will guide her through movement fundamentals and injury prevention. Video sessions in the Team Room and at camps will help her dissect edge angles, hip position, and line choice. She’ll attend fall dryland, Christmas camp, and out-of-division projects that expose her to new terrain and higher-level competition. Each layer is part of a holistic progression built from decades of coaching wisdom and continuous innovation.
Her world will expand even further as the Hill, Team, and Club evolves through the ambitious Olympic Dreams Project, a multi-phase plan designed to elevate training facilities and create one of the country’s most advanced ski race environments. The project includes widening the iconic Olympic Dreams run, upgrading lighting and snowmaking, adding new terrain elements and safety systems, and developing a high-performance center with weight rooms, media spaces, athlete lounges, and coaching offices. For athletes like Emma, it means their dreams will be met with the infrastructure needed to pursue them.
Where History and Future Converge
Buck Hill’s legacy is more than lore, it is a blueprint. Under the legendary leadership of the late Ski Hall of Fame coach Erich Sailer, the Buck Hill Ski Racing Team grew into a global pipeline of talent. Thousands of racers passed through this program, carrying its values of Effort, Grit, and Courage into every race course and every chapter of their careers.
Today’s leadership honors that heritage while pushing relentlessly toward the future. They recognize that the sport is evolving, becoming more complex, more technical, more demanding. To meet that challenge, Buck Hill is continuously updating its training philosophies, expanding year-round offerings, and investing in both people and infrastructure to cultivate the next generation of champions.
Dreams That Take Flight on a Small Hill
Late in the evening, the crowds thin and the cold settles deeper into the snow. Emma makes one last pass down the fall line and carves clean arcs without making a single snow plume behind her. She doesn’t yet know where this sport will take her. But she is learning what countless Buck Hill athletes have learned before her, that greatness can grow anywhere, even on a 300-foot hill in Minnesota, if the structure behind it is strong enough.
And at Buck Hill, that structure is unlike anything else in the country.
Here, young athletes don’t just learn to ski race.
They learn to dream and to chase those dreams with Effort, Grit, and Courage.