Burke Mountain Academy Brand Film

I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the feeling of getting out of my father's Plymouth Duster and walking across the campus and seeing where I was going to live. It was a little adorable red farmhouse and I walked where we were going to eat and there's two picnic tables and then it just got better from there. How many miles can I run during GMR?

Trying to explain that to someone else is like probably gives some really confused looks but it's the combination of pushing yourself really hard but then doing it with people that you love and that you respect, it brings that fun factor to the hard work and that's a really successful combination. One of my favorite things about Burke were the ski races. Students would often help out and that was great and parents and community and just the amount of effort that it took to put on a ski race and Burke Mountain Academy always did it with such pride and such professionalism and those were just some of my favorite days when I just felt the most proud. I came to BMA as a student athlete that was already on the US ski team as a 15-year-old starting to travel and my mom is a school teacher in the school district where I was at really wholeheartedly said we can't support Diane and her endeavors.

So I came here a sophomore in high school. It took me five years to graduate because I was traveling and a full-time member on the US ski team. I won my world championship gold while I was here as a student at Burke at the age of 17 and I hold the record for the youngest world champion ever in the history of the sport and so it creates a unique environment, something that only this school can really support. Well, one of the reasons why I decided to come here was my parents both actually came to Burke Mountain Academy.

That's where they met. So when I was growing up, it kind of always seemed like a natural path to come and be a part of Burke and join the community. It is pretty, it's interesting being growing up in an athletic family, especially with my dad. He was super into sports.

So from like the moment I can remember, we were always throwing around a ball or going to baseball games or watching basketball, whatever it may be, developing athletes kind of always got ingrained into me. We'd always be talking about it. That's still now what we talk about. I mean, I was here when Warren Witherill was the headmaster.

You know, he was a really pretty amazing person. Just his ideas and how he expressed himself and really his influence. I think the school wouldn't be what it is without the foundational value system that he put in place. Amazingly optimistic about people and human nature.

I think that's why he really gave so much trust to the students. We gather in the front room in the Fraser House, the entire school, and Warren, he'd tell stories. He'd love to tell stories. But they always had, you know, some meaning.

Ski racing is a small community. You can travel almost literally anywhere in the globe and find someone who knows a Berkey. Whether that's on a mountain in South America that like, hey, you're from Burke? Oh, I know a Berkey.

So it's really cool community to be a part of. And then just the gnarliness of the sport alone, ski racing, I mean, you win 10% of, no, you don't win 10%. You sometimes you never win. There's people that never won or they, but they've done their best and they feel good about that.

And some of my best races were 12th place that I felt better on the 12th place than maybe the one I won. The good thing is that everybody else is going through it too. And they know what you're doing, going through. So that's nice.

Like we've always kind of wanted to have gritty kids. So we'll be outside, you know, doing field circuits in the morning in the fall or it's 30 degrees and or if it's pouring rain. Wherever you're at, if you have a self-awareness of what you're good at and what you struggle with, you will do really well here. The learning doesn't stop when class ends.

We don't have bells that kind of signal the end of, end of the class day and the end of the learning. It's meant to continue and that involves eating meals with your teachers, doing workouts with your teachers. Where people can come here and find out who they are as an individual and come out of their shell and Burke prides themselves on that. So then it's, you know, just moving over and being proud of who you are.

So who they think they are and by this process of sort of pushing on their comfort zone, I think we get closer to who they can be. Just an amazingly supportive place. Kids are not afraid to fail. They're getting out of their comfort zone.

And I think that's a great lesson for them. And I think it serves them well for throughout their lives. You know, when you're standing in that start gate and you know that you've climbed that mountain with your buddy on your back and the freezing cold in October when you really didn't want to and it's about to snow and you're leaving for ski camp in two days, it goes a long ways to know that you you push yourself to that level.