Four alpine ski racers at the 2026 Winter Olympics came through the same Utah-based program: Rowmark Ski Academy.
Those athletes include Team USA’s Breezy Johnson, a three-time Olympian who won gold in the women’s downhill, Katie Hensien, a two-time Olympian, Mary Bocock, who made her Olympic debut, and Madison Hoffman, a two-time Olympian competing for Australia.
Now in its 44th year, Rowmark, which is based out of Salt Lake City-based private school Rowland Hall, has sustained an Olympic presence at every Games since 1988, and continues to expand its reach at the highest level of the sport.
So what is it about the school that keeps producing Olympians?
According to Rowmark Ski Academy Program Director Per Lundstam, the system that builds those athletes is not centered only on results. It is a structure that asks athletes to manage competing demands of academics, training and travel while developing the independence to help them fulfill big goals — in sport or otherwise.
“Our mission statement itself is to create really good humans and create humans the world needs,” said Lundstam. “That is a big part of our DNA.”
There are only around 35 athletes in the academy, a scale that allows for a higher coach-to-athlete ratio and more individualized attention across both training and academics. Coaches and teachers work in close coordination, adjusting schedules, offering additional sessions and maintaining constant communication to keep athletes on track.
“We are trying to help the athletes through this dynamic mechanism to help them and support them, and teachers go way beyond what they normally do to teach these students, and the same goes for the coaching staff. So it is a pretty amazing and unique program that way,” said Lundstam.
As a K-12 school, Rowland Hall allows academy athletes to share classrooms with students outside the ski program, while giving families the option to keep siblings in the same school as they support their racers’ development at Rowmark.
“I wanted to be somewhere I could still have a high level of academics, while also ski racing,” said senior Alden Rhodes. “And also have friends outside of skiing.”
During the winter, athletes attend classes from 8:30 a.m. to midday before heading to the Utah Olympic Park for afternoon training, often followed by strength work, before they return home for several hours of homework.
For student athletes like Ruby Rosh, senior and team captain on the Rowmark team, evenings can stretch late, especially for athletes commuting back to Salt Lake City. Much of the academic work gets done immediately after training to avoid sacrificing weekends.
“It just takes a lot of commitment and discipline,” she said.
At the Utah Olympic Park, Rowmark athletes train alongside collegiate teams and, at times, World Cup racers — occasionally former classmates who have moved through the same program. Coaches can set courses and shape snow surfaces to replicate the conditions athletes would face in higher levels of competition.
“It’s super cool to be able to share the venue with some really high-level ski racers, and try to emulate that,” said Rhodes. “It is cool to see those athletes in training and to be able to try to reach for that.”
In the gym at the Utah Olympic Park, chalkboard walls are covered in the signatures amd names of athletes and teams from around the world who have trained there, marking different Games cycles and training camps, turning the room into a running log of elite performance.
It’s the same space where bobsled and skeleton athletes warm up to compete on the world stage, where international teams prepare for World Cups and their Olympic debuts, and where Rowmark athletes now lift and train as part of their daily schedule.
For Rosh, it’s a daily reminder of what’s possible.
“You almost feel it,” she said. “The athletic greatness, and that everything has happened here, and you’re literally a part of it.”
That proximity reshapes how Rowmark athletes see the sport. Olympians aren’t distant figures; they’re recent graduates and training partners, like Elizabeth and Mary Bocock, who joined the World Cup circuit together in 2023, the same year Elizabeth graduated from Rowmark Ski Academy.
“They were literally me three years ago,” Rosh said. “It makes it feel so much more attainable. We’ve trained with Breezy a couple times, and just seeing them competing on the world stage, it’s crazy to see how easy they make it look.”
Ski racing may be an individual sport, but Rowmark leans heavily on the team bond and shared progress, said Rhodes and Rosh.
“There’s definitely competition,” Rosh said. “But in a way where we’re all trying to push each other to be better and we’re always having fun, even within our own rivalries.”
Rhodes agreed: “Everyone genuinely wants to see each other succeed on this team, and I think that’s actually pretty rare.”
Rosh missed large portions of two seasons after multiple shoulder surgeries, setbacks that can often isolate athletes from their teams. Instead, she described a system that kept her fully integrated, even when she couldn’t train.
“I was still very much a part of the team,” she said. “People were checking in on me. It never felt like I was on the outside.”
Older athletes mentor younger ones through the program when they can, Rosh said, helping them navigate the same pressures they once faced.
“When you’re younger, everything feels like the biggest deal,” Rosh said. “And then you realize it’s not, so it’s a lot of working with shared experience and talking through things, and offering a lot of encouragement. I think that has been really impactful for them, but also for me, being able to give the advice that I wish I had got at that age.”
Lundstam said the program is shifting to better support how athletes improve over time, starting to bring age groups together more often in training and keeping a consistent approach across all levels to help them develop faster.
“We really want to have the same methods — the Rowmark DNA and science — going into all the different age groups. We really want to accelerate athletes’ trajectories and make sure that they get exposed to the absolute best predictive development,” said Lundstam.
That system is backed by a coaching staff with experience at the highest levels of the sport, along with ongoing development that brings in national and international perspectives. Looking ahead, the program is also expanding its use of sports science, with new facilities designed to mirror the kind of testing and performance analysis used at the national team level.
“We have a very strong coaches development program in place. We’re getting exposed to world-class ideas,” said Lundstam. “I think we have a lot of merging factors that will continue to fuel us as a very strong team.”
For the director, those pieces are what allow the program to produce results that outpace its size, especially as they are built on a system that gives coaches the ability to individualize training and focus on each athlete’s development.
“It’s the ratio with phenomenal coaches and very strong ability to look at the athletes and pay attention to details, be a lot more focused on their development and put more time into each athlete, and then also the amazing facilities that we have around us in Utah,” he said.
As Rosh looks ahead to college, what stands out from her time at Rowmark is how prepared she feels to handle what comes next — skiing or otherwise.
“I can’t control the weather. I can’t control the conditions,” she said. “But I can control how I ski and how hard I choose to work.”
Years of balancing school, training and competition have forced her to get comfortable operating in uncertainty, and knowing that, regardless of anything else, hard work will help her reach her goals.
“It’s one of those sports where you get back what you give to it,” she said. “I love that the harder I work, I can literally see it paying off. And there’s just no better feeling than going super fast down the side of the mountain. It’s like being on a roller coaster.”
Not every Rowmark athlete follows the path to the world stage. Some continue skiing in college, others step away from competition entirely. Rosh and Rhodes are both headed to college next year with a focus on academics, but are excited to keep skiing in whatever capacity they choose, whether on a team or not.