LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Consider this high school schedule: alpine skiing four hours each morning, five hours of reading, writing and arithmetic in the afternoon. Instead of alpine skiing, you might prefer ice hockey, figure skating, luge or another winter sport.

For students at the National Sports Academy that fantasy is reality. Founded in 1979, this co-ed boarding school for grades eight through 12 has provided the athletic and academic needs for a special group of students.

	“	There's no apathy. These are very quick, emotionally healthy kids who are good at something. ”
		— Peter Fish, dean of faculty

Bill Demong of nearby Saranac Lake stands as one shining example of this unusual scholastic formula. As a 17-year-old at the Nagano, Japan, Winter Olympics, Demong finished 34th overall and third among the U.S. competitors in the Nordic combined event that includes ski jumping and cross country skiing.

But students like Demong are only the most visible success stories. There's plenty of opportunity for academic success here, where the enrollment is 100 and the average class size is eight students.

"This is still a college preparatory school," said Peter Fish, who serves as the dean of faculty at the National Sports Academy. "About 95 percent of these students will go on to college and the other five percent will make it athletically."

The academic successes go on to highly regarded colleges like Dartmouth, Williams and Middlebury, according to Fish.

However, there aren't any minimum academic requirements for acceptance at the National Sports Academy. The only requirements are interest in a particular winter sport. A very strong interest.

"The kids are wonderful," said Fish. "There's no apathy. These are very quick, emotionally healthy kids who are good at something."

And you aren't "cut" from NSA if you don't show athletic promise. The goal of this unique school is simply providing academic and athletic programs that meet the individual needs of student athletes as they prepare themselves for winter athletic competition, college and life.

"Our academic standard is work ethic," Fish said. "We will work with almost anyone who is able to work hard and devote themselves."

As with any privately funded prep school, that environment comes at a price, in this case $16,500 per year. However, nearly 70 percent are on some type of NSA provided financial aid.

Obviously, the location at Lake Placid makes NSA possible. The facilities that have hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics serve as the training grounds for NSA. But it's the vision of dean David Wenn that has taken full advantage of those facilities. Wenn was here in 1979 when the initial enrollment was eight students.

It would be hard to imagine a better place to train and study for any student interested in winter sports — Olympic facilities and a schedule so flexible that it can allow for European competition within the academic year.

One more thing about that weekly schedule of training in the morning, classes in the afternoon. Fish is often asked if his students are exhausted by the time they arrive for classes.

"They are wide awake," Fish said with a smile. "They've been doing what they love to do and they are anything but exhausted."

How many other instructors can say that about their students?