La Sensazione!

The recent history of the Boston College ski program is a trip through a glass ceiling repeatedly shattered. A team that once showed up to carnivals and simply competed among eastern powerhouses grew into a head-to-head, pound-for-pound skiing tradition, and a proud tradition dating back over the decades helped build the backdrop of a team-based approach to a sport known for individual accomplishments.

It found breakthrough avenues against some of the nation's most glamorous skiing programs and discovered methods capable of rooting in national success. Carter Robertson was the first domino as the first-ever skier to qualify for the NCAA Championships, and Parker Biele joined him one year later as the first female to compete at the national level. Biele later became a two-time qualifier opposite Haley Castner and Lauren Geary, the first freshmen to ever qualify at the NCAA event.

That history caught speed, and this week saw its continued rolling when Italian Chiara Maria Ferrari became the first international BC skier to ever qualify for an NCAA Championship. A freshman like Castner and Geary, she additionally became the first rookie to ever qualify in a season when the entire EISA competed.

But if the mountains of the Northeast wrote history in Chestnut Hill, they didn't quite register with the Italian import who ironically never knew what it meant to race at the NCAA level.

"I didn't really need or expect a national championship [bid], nor did I know that I was a first freshman or anything," Ferrari said. "I'm from Italy, and I didn't grow up with the idea of competing for the NCAA or in college skiing, or in college athletics in general. I grew up just trying to do my best on my skis in general, and when I moved to the United States, I didn't really have any expectations. It was only until one day that they said I might have qualified that I realized what I did."

Ferrari will discover the NCAA heights this week when she competes at the national championships in Park City, Utah, but it will only continue a breakout year that saw BC's best-kept secret shine on the open slopes. She finished 16th in the EISA giant slalom overall rankings in her first turn, and she qualified for the national championship event as one of 17 skiers out of the East Region.

She joined several names from Vermont, Middlebury and Dartmouth, all of which are sending three individuals and multiple alternates to the competition out west. Ferrari was additionally one of four skiers in the east to qualify as sole representatives of their school, though St. Michael's College additionally qualified an alternate for the competition.

A native of La Spezia, Italy, Ferrari was BC's best-kept secret until she finished 16th in the EISA's overall giant slalom rankings. Her first giant slalom race earned her a top-10 finish in the Colby Carnival in mid-January, and she finished seventh overall at the Middlebury Carnival one month later while simultaneously placing 12th in a race that helped replace the Vermont Carnival that had been postponed at the start of February.

"She just brings such a passion to the sport," head coach Chuck Carmone said. "This entire team is passionate, but Chiara has a different way of life, just a different approach. She brings this positivity to everything she does that no matter the conditions, she was gung ho to ski every day, and it showed in her results."

The performances helped redefine the entire Boston College program by adding a cerebral element to the Eagles' trademark grit on the slopes. A team that always possessed that little extra edge as the program located further south than the Vermont-based or New Hampshire-based schools now had this natural, international talent that brought a completely different way of life.

Ferrari, for example, grew up skiing in the Alps but never skied at Sunday River or Sugarloaf, mountains that are usually considered home tracks for many members of the Boston College program. Her eidetic memory of the twists and turns came from studying them before she jumped into a starting gate, which in turn offered new perspectives both given and received from her teammates.

"I had never met anyone that memorized a course the way that she did," Carmone said. "She knew every turn verbatim, and when you ask her, she would give you this unbelievable description of the counts. She would know where a 13th gate after a hairpin was located, and it helped her teammates because she would know the course [that way]. That's the mark of a cerebral skier, and where some skiers memorize two or three things before they just attack the rest of the course, she would know exactly where she needed to be in every turn. Then she would have unbelievable, Italian, feathery touch to her skis where she would get on and off her edges so quickly. It was so unique and fun to watch."

This season alone gave BC a fresh and completely different dynamic, but the production goes deeper than simply listing the Eagles among the nation's best because her approach and attitude fit into the Boston College system like a custom-fit glove. Ferrari had dealt with injuries prior to arriving in Chestnut Hill, but Carmone knew what he saw on film and through Zoom calls. Both were the perfect fits for one another, and after a little bit of a slow start around Thanksgiving - largely due to a warm snap of weather - both the program and the skier settled down enough to form a cohesive, incredible pair.

"Boston College has been able to match my two passions and my interests for the first time," Ferrari said. "In Italy, school and sports do not go together, and a lot of athletes aren't able to build a future through school while you do sports. That's the main difference, though it's also different to have my days so scheduled. It's helped make me an organized person to stick to a schedule, which has made me more productive.

"I had decided to come to the United States about three years ago after I had a big injury," she added. "I was close to reaching my goals and skiing in certain international races as an Italian national, but I got injured and had to stop for over two years. I still wanted to ski, but I also wanted to figure out what to do [for the future]. I kept looking at schools in the U.S., and with an education at BC, I knew that sports and school were finally something I could do together."

"I always sensed that she was a positive kid," Carmone agreed, "but I couldn't talk to her coaches. You learn different things about [recruits] when you talk to coaches, but just talking to her, I got the sense that this was going to work. She just adapted to BC so easily."

Now with the immediate success in her pocket, Ferrari will head to Park City to ski against the best the college circuit offers. She will go as the representative for Boston College, a team that has always represented a family approach to skiing. In a program where the collective and the individual often mesh into a single unit, her thunderous flight down the Park City Mountain Resort slopes will encompass everything she knows about the sport - and everything she's learned as a member of the Eagles.

"In Italy, we have the Alps and the Apennines," Ferrari said. "I started skiing in the southern part of the country where the snow is more similar to the East [in the United States]. I moved to the Alps later on and loved it there, but it helped me feel like I could adapt to different kinds of snow pretty easily."

"The EISA has taken a quantum leap in speed," Carmone said, "and we're still moving up, which is really impressive. We've had races where we've beaten skiers from Dartmouth or Vermont, and a few years ago, those conversations would have been impossible to have. We're really building depth here, and there are a lot of strong skiers in this program. It's diverse, but I can pick any six names [off the roster] and be happy with whichever team I can choose."

The NCAA Skiing Championship kicks off on Wednesday with the giant slalom. Live video and results will be posted via the NCAA official website at NCAA.com.

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Parker Biele

Haley Castner

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Chiara Maria Ferrari

Carter Robertson

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