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05/11/2017 12:00 AMSkiing has been Carly Fischer’s primary athletic endeavor throughout her life. In her final high school season, Carly shredded the powder on a path to prominence and showed what a lifelong dedication to the slopes can produce.
Carly is a Madison resident who recently completed her career as a senior captain with the ski racing team at Cheshire Academy. She started with the sport as a toddler and began skiing competitively just a few years later. Carly spent her first two years of high school competing for Hand, taking the Connecticut Interscholastic Ski League (CISL) slalom title as a freshman and finishing as the runner-up the following year.
In the 2017 winter season, Carly finished first out of 50 girls for the giant slalom at the CISL Shoot-Out behind her combined time of 48.51 seconds. She then captured the slalom crown with a total mark of 51.88 to make Team Connecticut, which features the top 12 female high school skiers in the state. After that, Carly competed at the Eastern High School Championships in New Hampshire, where she finished 18th overall in the slalom and was first among Team Connecticut’s members.
“Making Team Connecticut, I was so incredibly proud of that accomplishment. I’ve come a long way in the sport, so it was surreal to see it all pay off,” says Carly, who also placed 34th in the giant slalom at the Eastern Championships. “In New Hampshire, I had glimpses of greatness. For the whole high school season, I was really proud of myself, and the team was always supporting me.”
The mental aspect of skiing has proved the biggest test for Carly throughout her career. However, Carly stuck to her game-plan and maintained a positive vibe on the way to her banner day at the recent state meet.
“For the whole concept of skiing, you have to have mental confidence and toughness, which has been the biggest challenge for me my entire career. It was about maintaining confidence all day,” Carly says. “It was about believing in myself and that I was capable of achieving my goals. To come out on top in the giant slalom was real nice.”
Cheshire Academy skiing Head Coach Nicole Burnett describes Carly as a self-motivated competitor and leader who’s always ready for a challenge and never stops striving to reach the next level.
“I feel that Carly’s success in ski racing is due to her relentless drive and discipline. This young lady does not need to be reminded to train for a sport. She knows what she needs to do and will do everything in her power to perform at her best every time. She may be reserved and focused, but she is also very competitive by nature,” says Burnett. “In addition, Carly is an excellent leader when pressed to do so. She’d rather not be in the spotlight, but she’s great at working with her peers and giving constructive feedback. I have coached her the past two years and really cannot take credit for her successes. She has her coaches to thank for that, in addition to her wonderful dad Mike Fischer, who is her slalom coach. Carly came to me as a junior and had been racing for years. Although she came in first for both [giant slalom] and slalom for the CISL, Carly’s best and favorite discipline is slalom. Not only is Carly the top female ski racer in the highly-competitive CISL, but she is also an excellent soccer player.”
Carly says that she’s come out of her shell as the years have gone on, while also zoning in on becoming championship-caliber skier.
“As a freshman, I was shy and not confident. I didn’t know where to focus my energy,” Carly says. “As I got older, I was able to focus on certain things, and it helped with my development. It’s all a mental game first, and then the physical one for me.”
Carly says there’s a quite an emotional component that comes with being a ski racer. She experiences those emotions the most intensely when everything clicks for her during the heart of a race.
“There is no other feeling like skiing. It’s an adrenaline rush when you have that perfect run, and you feel your skis pop off the snow and know you are going fast. It’s a rush that separates it from other sports,” she says. “It’s great when you work hard to achieve minuscule things, but they are things that make a big difference in a race.”
This fall, Carly will attend Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where she hopes to compete for the school’s skiing and soccer squads. Carly will never forget her four years as a high school skier, saying they established the foundation for her to reach even greater heights in life.
“I want to continue to improve and get better,” says Carly, who thanks her family, coaches, and the Cheshire Academy athletic department. “I wouldn’t have my work ethic and drive without all of my coaches, and I just want to keep improving, and it’ll all hopefully show up in the results.”