BY MATT STOUT

Deb Flanders remembers it clearly, the letter that Ian Hanson gave her more than two years ago.

Then a freshman ski racer, Hanson had just balked at offers and partial financial aid packages from some of the country’s top ski academies, high-priced institutions that mix academics and intense training to produce some of the sport’s best athletes.

Choosing to attend Bow High School and continue to race for the Pat’s Peak ski club team instead, Hanson soon penned a letter to Flanders, the ski club’s program director, stating both his intentions – “I want to be a U.S. ski team skier” – and a question – “What can I do to get there?”

“So we sat down and gave him some guidelines,” Flanders said. “We (the coaches) said, ‘Really, 90 percent of it is mental. You have everything that it takes; it’s just about believing in yourself and seeing yourself like you belong there.’”

Countless downhill runs and podium trips later, Hanson now isn’t the only one believing.

With a 10th-place finish at the NHIAA Alpine Meet of Champions on Thursday, Feb. 22, Hanson earned his second consecutive invite to race with the New Hampshire boys team at the Eastern High School Championships, where he finished second overall last year. The championships are set to start March 16.

The bid capped a successful high school season for the 17-year-old Bow junior, who a week prior finished first in the slalom and second in the giant slalom at the Division III boys Alpine championships and continues to lead the Pat’s Peak team most weekends.

Yet, the key to Hanson’s success stems from his outlook that the results, as well as the outcome of each and every race, aren’t the only things that matter.

The third generation of ski racers in his family, Hanson has learned from the stories of those before him, such as his grandfather, ***, who was an Alpine ski official and director for the U.S. ski team. He died in 1978, two years before he was to serve as an official at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.

More so, Ian Hanson has benefited from the perspective of his father, Jon, and uncle, Dickie. Two of the state’s top ski racers at Ian’s age, Jon specialized in downhill skiing before he studied in England, and Dickie – the better of the two, Jon said – trained with the U.S. ski team in Europe at 19 years old, all the while chasing points in the U.S.S.A. World Cup circuit.

“Sometimes this sport has a lot of pressure, and that’s the downside to ski racing,” Jon Hanson said. “The stress and the pressure on an individual are as high in ski racing as in any other sport you’ll come across.

“And my brother felt that,” he continued, adding that Dickie quit before he turned 20 years old.

For that reason, Jon said he never wanted to push his son into the sport. But at 9 years old and skiing in his first race at Bretton Woods, Ian showed every “sign and symptom” of a racer, Jon said.

Ian Hanson remembers finishing last, or near it, that day, but he’s also never forgotten the thrill of flying down the hill that afternoon, all eyes on him and the rush he got from that. Jon Hanson will also never forget a small boy with incredible balance and no fear.

While the results have certainly changed from that day, many things haven’t.

“It was pretty funny his freshman year when occasionally we’d go to a Division I race against some of the bigger schools,” said Bow Alpine ski coach, Joe Poole. “And here comes this freshman who just absolutely trounced them. So they got awoken that day.

They were saying, ‘Who is that kid?’”

Since then, the kid has also grown. Hanson stands at 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, adding nearly three inches and 20 pounds in the past few months alone. The extra weight has helped in generating more speed, but it’s also forced Hanson to adjust his technique.

Yet, he’s still managed to stay in the top echelon, play both football and baseball and remain a shining example that it doesn’t take a $35,000-a-year ski academy to become a standout on the slopes.

He’s also a case study in what it takes mentally to succeed as a skier, though he knows there are more mountains to climb.

“(My dad) will always be there to remind me not to take it too seriously,” Ian Hanson said.

“It’s a sport. I’m 17 years old. It’s not going to determine what I’ll do the rest of my life.

“But once you get a taste of that, being up there, whether you’re skiing well or not, you want to get back there,” he added. “And that will drive you to do well.”