SALT LAKE CITY — Olle Larsson no longer has an office — or a telephone extension — at Rowland Hall, but evidence of the retiring coach's presence is still all over the school.
There's a pair of still-dripping skis propped against a hallway locker. Thirty skinny Olympic hopefuls are lifting weights alongside the basketball team. On the wall, a numbered ski jersey has been framed, autographed and personalized with the carefully penned message, "Thanks for putting me on the U.S. Ski Team."
Larsson, in partnership with Rowland Hall, created the state's first and only high school ski racing team in 1982. Teenage skiers from all over the world audition for his program, which has been recognized by industry professionals as the best in the United States. Over the past 28 years, he's turned out dozens of Olympians, world champions and NCCA All-Americans.
"It's not much," said Larsson lightheartedly. The 65-year-old, who has wild, white hair and a face etched with merriment, punctuates most comments with a gleeful guffaw.
Physically, Rowmark Ski Academy is just three small rooms tucked away in a side hallway of Rowland Hall's big, two-story upper school building in Salt Lake City. Behind a glass door etched with the silhouette of a skier, it's cramped, full of office furniture, ski equipment and moving bodies.
Students, who pay $30,000 to $36,000 a year in tuition, split their time between the classroom and the slopes. Their mornings are full of classes — biology, English, math, etc. — at Rowland Hall. Afternoons, they grab their gear, climb into 15-passenger vans and caravan up to Park City Ski Resort.
Larsson is chatty as he navigates the big van around the canyon curves. The conversation meanders casually from the stock market to the Tiger Woods scandal. Sometimes the ski instructor starts up a "moose-spotting" contest.
Larsson doesn't stop smiling when they hit the slopes.
"We have fun because Olle has fun," said Breezy Johnson, 14, who left her family in Wyoming to attend the ski academy. Under Larsson's tutelage she qualified this year for the Trofeo Topolino in Italy, the most prestigious children's ski event in the world.
Larsson is a good coach, Johnson said, because he isn't afraid to try new things.
If Johnson's arms are too low, he uses duct tape to secure wooden dowels to her arms. To force her to keep her legs apart, he makes her wear big, foam doughnuts around her ankles.
"He's always looking for new ideas," Johnson said. "If he needs us to practice something and there's not a drill, he'll just make one up on the spot — and it'll work."
Rowmark Ski Academy itself was a product of Larsson's ingenuity.
He founded the academy with just a rotary telephone and a child's school desk. Rowland Hall didn't have an extra room, so he did business in the hallway.
"I didn't know what it was to start a ski academy," said Larsson, who had just left a job coaching Canada's Alpine Ski Team to study sports psychology at the University of Utah. "I just picked up the phone and started calling people. … I think I called every skier in America."
He put in 18-hour days that first year. The stress painted dark circles under Larsson's perpetually twinkling eyes. Sometimes, after recruitment meetings, concerned parents would take him aside and thoughtfully inquire, "Are you getting enough sleep?"
"But I never felt like I worked," he said, chuckling. "It was like my favorite hobby."
Larsson fell in love with downhill skiing before he had ever seen a mountain.
He grew up in a small snowy town in Sweden where cross-country skiing was as common as walking. Larsson loved to pile up the snow to make jumps. He saw alpine skiers in photographs and dreamed about visiting a mountain.
"When the snow came, it was panic to get the skis out," he said. "My poor mom couldn't understand why in the world I got so excited."
As soon as he completed vocational school, Larsson moved to Canada to learn ski racing. His career — carpentry — was just something he did "when there was no skiing around" or his stock market investments weren't paying out enough to fund his ski addiction.
Fifteen years passed before he won a race, but he didn't get discouraged.
"I was just possessed," he said. "The speed, the rush — I just couldn't get enough."
That passion is Larsson's biggest strength, his students said.
Hilary Lindh, a Rowmark alumna who went on to win an Olympic silver medal, said Larsson's "crazy, creative" drills taught her to find her own style.
"The best thing I learned from Olle was that it was OK to think for myself," she said. "I didn't have to have someone lay out my career for me. I was confident in my individuality."
When asked how he feels about retiring, Larsson (of course) laughed.
"We'll see how it feels when the snow comes next December," he said.
e-mail: estuart@desnews.com