Jack and Cathy Hay

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)

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 recently purchased the Alpine Sport Shop 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 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 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 live-streamed, 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.