Adirondack Sports November 2020

ATHLETE PROFILE
VAIL, 1997.
NOVEMBER 2020 9
Jack and
Cathy Hay
SUN VALLEY, 2017.
TERRI-LYNN PELLEGRI
By Jeff Farbaniec
After nearly a half century of working
in the ski business, you’d think Jack
and Cathy Hay might be ready for a
break. You’d be wrong. Jack explains, “We’re
both healthy and active and love what we
do. We work hard from mid-July to mid-May
every year, but then we get a taste of retirement
for about two months. It’s the best of
both worlds.”
As owners of the Alpine Sport Shop in
Saratoga Springs, Jack and Cathy work side
by side, assisting customers, ordering products,
and stocking the shelves. They must be
doing something right as Alpine is celebrating
its 80th anniversary as an independently-owned
ski shop this winter – a milestone
very few other ski shops have achieved. As
anyone who owns their own business will
tell you, it’s a tremendous amount of work,
and “sometimes a little more work-life balance
would be nice,” says Cathy. “But looking
back, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
The couple met in 1968. “I was a senior
and Cathy was a junior, and we were both on
the Saratoga Springs High School ski team,”
Jack explains. Cathy’s parents, Thurlow and
Dorothy Woodcock, had purchased the
Alpine Sport Shop in 1966 from its founders,
ski pioneer Ed Taylor and his wife Jo. They
relocated the business from Spring Street to
its present location, a chalet style building
that Thurlow designed and built himself. Jack
and Cathy got married in 1971 and he began
working in the shop while taking classes at
RPI, and later Skidmore. Cathy went to business
school and worked in banking for seven
years before joining Jack and her parents in
the shop.
Despite their high school ski team background,
Jack and Cathy never considered
themselves competitive skiers. “Back then,”
Cathy explains, “high school ski teams
were much more of a social activity. We’re
still friends with some of our teammates.”
Athletes on the team were required to compete
in slalom, giant slalom and cross country
(Nordic), and that balanced approach led
AGES: 69 (Jack) and 68 (Cathy)
RESIDENCE: Saratoga Springs
FAMILY: Two daughters and four
grandchildren
PROFESSION: Owners of the Alpine Sport Shop
SPORTS: Skiing, of course!
FAVORITE
SKI AREAS: Big Sky (Jack),
Taos and Telluride (Cathy)
to well-rounded skiers. Nowadays, as recreational
skiers, Jack and Cathy stay in shape
by swimming, walking or running, hiking
and cycling. Jack enjoys volleyball and sets
up a court behind the shop most summers.
Although their interests have evolved over
the years, they’ve always been focused on
“training for life” as Cathy likes to say.
With the shop taking up so much of their
time, Jack and Cathy never had an opportunity
to ski out West. That changed in 1994,
when they were asked to lead a group of skiers
on a trip to Europe. “We ended up with 84
skiers on that trip, and had such a great time,
we went back for four years straight,” Jack
recalls. That trip was the start of an annual
tradition. “We’re up to 42 trips now, we’ve
been all around the world on Alpine Sport
Shop trips” says Cathy, bringing literally
thousands of local skiers with them.
Owning a ski shop comes with a few other
perks too. Jack and Cathy have met many
inspiring athletes and ski personalities over
the years, like Warren Miller, Picabo Street
and Klaus Obermeyer. Cathy talks fondly
about a magical day at the Yellowstone Club,
perhaps the most exclusive private mountain
ski resort in the world. “A customer and
friend invited us to come over for the day. We
skied over from Big Sky, making figure eights
through fields of untracked powder. When
we got to the lift, the attendant started it up
for us. It was like skiing in a dream.”
If you’re wondering how a ski shop can
not only survive but thrive in today’s internet
economy, it’s all about evolving, innovating
and personal service. “We’re constantly
reinventing ourselves,” says Jack, “but personal
service is at the core of everything we
do. After all, you can’t get your skis tuned or
your boots fitted online.”
Alpine Sport Shop has a history of innovating.
In 1976, Jack worked with Cathy’s dad
to install a unique indoor ski deck to teach
beginners to make parallel turns. By Jack’s
estimate, more than 600 local skiers learned
to ski using the ski deck before they had to
tear it down in the early ‘80s to create more
retail space. When snowboarding came
along in the mid ‘80s, Alpine was among the
early adopters. “We picked up Burton in the
second year that they were marketing snowboards,”
recalls Jack. Before long, Jack built
an addition to the shop for the additional
space they needed for snowboarding gear.
Today the shop stocks a full line of downhill
and cross-country skis, snowshoes, and an
expanded range of backcountry equipment.
Other shops carry bikes, boats, patio furniture
or tennis gear in the summer. For a
few years in the ‘90s Alpine Sport Shop carried
bikes, but Jack’s and Cathy’s philosophy
has always been to focus on snow sports.
“Without that focus,” says Jack, “it’s hard to
do either one well.” The numbers don’t lie,
by Jack’s count more than 25 ski shops in
the greater Capital Region have gone out of
business in the 49 years he’s been at Alpine.
Jack and Cathy both feel it’s important
to give back to the community. The shop
has sponsored the annual Warren Miller ski
▲ TAOS WITH JOINT TRIP LEADER
TERRI-LYNN PELLEGRI, 2019.
◀ THURLOW WOODCOCK AND
CLIF TAYLOR, GRADUATED LENGTH
METHOD OF SKI INSTRUCTION
FOUNDER, ON ALPINE SKI DECK, 1976.
movie for more than 20 years as a fundraiser
for the Saratoga Springs High School ski
teams and the Double H Ranch adaptive
ski program. This year’s event will be livestreamed,
with a portion of the proceeds
from tickets purchased through Alpine going
to Double H.
Nowadays, there’s nothing Jack and
Cathy enjoy more than skiing with their
grandchildren. Like the rest of the family, the
grandkids have all learned to ski at an early
age. “I was four when I learned to ski and Jack
was nine. There’s something magical about
being out in the fresh air in winter, the snow
and the cold,” says Cathy. “It doesn’t matter
if you’re 7 or 70, there’s nothing better!”
Jeff Farbaniec of Saratoga Springs is an
avid telemark skier: saratogaskier@gmail.
com. You can find him with his wife, Beth,
and kids, Daniel and Sylvie, on the slopes of
Gore, Whiteface, and Killington all winter.