Hopkins Nordic Skier Connor Benton Reaches End of Stellar High School Career

It was early in 2008 that Hopkins Nordic skier Connor Benton knew he had a chance to compete in the sport at an elite level.

Then a freshman, Benton kept up with his upperclassmen teammates in the Section 6 championship race—which one area coach calls “a mini state meet”—as the Royals tied Minneapolis Southwest, then the top-ranked team in the state.

Benton and three of his teammates qualified for the state meet. Benton finished 50th overall that year and has only improved since then, finishing 16th as a sophomore and fourth last year.

“As a seventh-grader, Connor was as good as most of our 11th-graders,” Hopkinsco-head coach Kevin Kos said. “There’s a certain confidence that comes with that.”

Benton’s ambition was to end his high-school skiing career on top.

“[My goal is] to win state individually,” the Royals senior said last month. “I think it’s within my grasp.”

Benton, who also runs on the Royals cross-country team, devoted 400 hours to training in the past two years as he tries to reach that goal.

In the offseason, he roller-skied for two or three hours every morning and often went back out in the afternoon as well.

Benton, whose parents are both skiers, started in the Minnesota Youth Ski League at age five.

“I found out I like the competitive side of it,” he said.

Benton has parlayed that love of competition into success beyond the high school level as well.

From 2008-10, he qualified for the United States Ski and Snowboard Association Junior Olympics as part of the Midwest Nordic Team, which has allowed him to compete in Alaska, California and Maine. Benton’s sister Sarah, a 10th-grader, made the team last year, joining her brother in Maine.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to make it every year since ninth grade,” Connor Benton said. “It’s ultra-competitive, as a race at that level should be.”

Yet Benton understands that there is more to skiing than the competition, saying, “I was having the most fun” in Maine last year in terms of his overall experience.

And just as Benton understands that there is more to skiing than the competition, he knows that there is more to life than just skiing.

Although his sister qualified for this year’s Junior Olympics, Benton did not, which means he won’t get the chance to compete at Minneapolis’s Theodore Wirth Park in March.

But that’s just fine with him.

“If I make it [to the Junior Olympics this year], great,” he said before the final qualifying race. “If not, I’m not going to cry about it.”

In fact, Benton isn’t sure about his skiing future after this season. He has been accepted at the University of New Hampshire, which has a ski team and has applied to Dartmouth, another ski school. However, he has also applied to several schools in California that don’t have ski teams.

Benton, whose favorite subject is calculus, is a straight-A student who carries a 3.987 grade point average and is considering majoring in engineering in college.

He thinks he may want to return to competitive skiing after college if his school doesn’t have a team. But during a January interview, he was only focused on finishing his high school career on a high note.

The Royals’ boys finished first overall in the team standings on Jan. 8 at the prestigious Mesabi East Invitational, with Benton leading the way with a sixth place finish in the freestyle division.

On Feb. 3, Benton again led Hopkins to a title, finishing second overall in the individual standings as the Royals claimed the Lake Conference championship.

Benton didn't quite reach his goal of winning the state title—finishing second overall, nine seconds behind Lakeville North's Ben Saxton.

In the end, though, what matters most are the relationships that skiing helped build.

Kos will certainly cherish his time spent as Benton’s coach.

“He’s like a little cousin, who you actually like,” said Kos, smiling. “[Coaching him has] been a dream.”