When last heard from, in the spring of 2023, Kieran Hildreth, now a 15-year-old sophomore at the Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont, was wrapping up what his father, Jeff, described as “a remarkable run,” having won U-14 state, regional, and Can-Am championships, the latter, contested at Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, being most impressive inasmuch as he was vying with top racers from Colorado to Maine and from two-thirds of Canada.
More recently, Kieran, a second-year U-16 who spends most of the year training in Burke, and returns home to Montauk for the summers, enjoyed another eye-popping run: In early December, he dominated the Eastern Region U-16 circuit, winning the United States Ski and Snowboard Association (USSSA) Regional Performance Series super-G race at Copper Mountain, Colo., which he followed up by winning all six giant slalom and slalom races at an annual RPS event at Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks. Those victories qualified him to compete against some of the nation’s top 45 age-group qualifiers from Maine to Alaska in the USSSA National Performance Series held at Burke Mountain between Jan. 6 and 10.
At the NPS, Kieran continued his winning ways, his father said by phone this week, securing back-to-back victories in giant slalom the first day and placing first and second in slalom events the next.
Those performances earned him the overall NPS championship title, his father said, officially ranking him as the top U-16 male alpine skier in the United States.
“There’s more,” Jeff Hildreth said, adding that he and his wife, Jaime, had just returned from the Longines Future Hahnenkamm Champions race in Kitzbuhel, Austria — an event that attracted top U-16 skiers from 11 countries — where Kieran and five Burke Mountain Academy teammates, competing under the “Team Burke” banner, secured a silver podium finish, and where Kieran and a Burke teammate, Katie Rowekamp, were recognized as the fastest overall male and female athletes — the first time, the elder Hildreth said, that U.S. skiers had been so honored.
Next up for Kieran will be the Federation of European Ski and Snowboard Associations Alpine Ski Cup competition in Les Menuires, France, “either later this month or in early March,” where he will represent the USSSA.
Before signing off, Jeff Hildreth said the couple’s 12-year-old twins, Audrey and Baron, were also off to strong starts as first-year U-14s in the Burke Mountain Academy’s junior program.
