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Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of the Vail Daily’s “Where Are They Now” series, featuring local athletes — past and present — throughout the month of January.

Two things stand out from this reporter’s first official day on the job with the Vail Daily — a rainy, cold November election night three years ago. 

First, I remember being so frozen after watching a 110-minute, 0-0 double-overtime thriller, which ended with the Gore Rangers boys soccer team claiming a 3-1 shootout win over DSST College View, I told then-Vail Mountain coach Jake Rainey I’d call him when I returned to the office because my fingers couldn’t hold a phone or write quotes down in my soggy notebook. 

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The other memory: Nick Kirwood.

“The senior’s savvy play and silky-smooth passing, along with his deft playmaking, provided entertainment in a game devoid of scoring,” I eventually wrote after thawing out.

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Kirwood was a classic three-sport star at Vail Mountain School. In addition to being the soccer team’s best player, he was also the floor general for a region championship basketball team in the winter and a member of the lacrosse team in the spring. Whenever I asked coaches about the dynamic athlete, however, they always talked of his main sport, which is the family sport: skiing. 

“Nick was just a competitor,” said current Vail Mountain coach Kevin Ives, who was an assistant during Kirwood’s senior campaign. “He embraced and relished the challenges.”

Three years after that memorable playoff win, Kirwood has continued to do just that.

Carving his own arch

Kirwood’s ski genes run deep. 

His mom, Brenda Buglione, was a U.S. ߣÏÈÉú Team athlete and founded Snow Motion, a nationally-broadcast ski show. His dad, Jeff, was ranked in the top-3 in his age class in the and captained the Dartmouth ski team in 1991. All three Kirwoods skied, with older sister Kate enjoying a career at Colby and older brother choosing Dartmouth. Kirwood’s great-great grandfather, great grandfather and uncle — Buglione’s brother, Steve — all also skied for the Big Green. The assumption was that Nick Kirwood would follow in their footsteps.

“There was maybe some subliminal pressure to get Nick to go to Dartmouth,” Jeff Kirwood said of the institution he called “the mecca of collegiate ski racing.”  

“But, he loved Boston College the minute he stepped on campus for a visit,” he continued. “He bought a BC sweatshirt during his campus tour and we were like, ‘Wait. What? You want to go BC?'”

“Ultimately, I think he grew up in a small ski town with lots of success as a ski racer and wanted a school in a city with big sports,” said Buglione, who hoped her son would choose her alma mater, University of Colorado. “We had to keep reminding (ourselves) that it is his journey, not ours.”

Even though his parents weren’t fans at first of him going to Boston, Nick Kirwood said he was in fact intrigued by the big city. 

“But another thing is I wanted to go there and help develop the team and build it up,” the ߣÏÈÉú and Snowboard Club Vail alumnus added. 

His mission caught the attention of the Eagles’ coaching staff.

“During the recruiting process, I noticed that even though Nick had family members that graduated from other ski institutions, he wanted to carve his own path and come to BC,” said Alpine coach Alex Norden. “Nick’s commitment to us on his own accord really impressed me.”

Kirwood didn’t go straight to the Eastern Intercollegiate ߣÏÈÉúing Association, though. After graduating in 2022, he went to Europe for six months and joined Kronplatz Racing Center, based out of Brunico, Italy, a small town 45 miles from Cortina. 

“For me, I didn’t want to go to a postgrad in the East Coast for a full year. I wanted to see the world and really get that full experience,” Kirwood said, adding that the ski lifestyle in Europe was “crazy intense.” 

“It was really cool to experience that because it’s so much different out there than it is in the U.S.”

Outside of competitions, Kirwood and his friend from Aspen, who also joined the program, traveled extensively. 

“We lived in hostels and took the trains everywhere,” he said.

They went from Milan to Monaco, Nice, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam and London. “It was probably the best time of my life, honestly,” Kirwood admitted. 

In January, he came home and raced for a month in Colorado before heading off to Green Mountain Valley School — the academy his dad attended as a youngster — to finish his gap year program and get used to East Coast snow.

The season ended well, with Kirwood ascending to . That summer, he interned for 10 weeks in his dad’s Aspen Grove Capital office in Avon. Kirwood said he received offers from several schools after his gap year, but he stuck with his original conviction.

“I said ‘no’ because I wanted to just do something different and step out of my comfort zone and walk into a situation where I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. 

Though a somewhat distant memory at this point, soccer hadn’t entirely vanished. During some on-campus fall intramural games, Kirwood even caught the attention of the Eagles’ varsity players.

“I tried to walk on to their team, actually,” Kirwood added. “That didn’t work just because their schedule conflicts with skiing, too.”

Stacking schedules wouldn’t have been new to Kirwood, who practically rode down the hill from U18 nationals to a regional basketball game as a senior. During his final prep summer, he squeezed in a three-week summer on-snow ski camp in Austria between Nike ID soccer camps at Stanford, San Diego State and yes, Dartmouth. 

“It was complicated,” Kirwood aptly summarized of his high school juggling act. In some ways, it’s probably made life in Chestnut Hill feel easy, even though the distance to the nearest hill is substantial. Every Monday and Wednesday, the ski team loads the bus at 5 a.m. for a two-hour ride to a mountain in New Hampshire. Upon an early-afternoon return, students file into various lecture halls. At the moment, Kirwood is pursuing an economics major with a minor in marketing and has a 3.7 GPA. 

He opened the 2023-24 Eastern Intercollegiate ߣÏÈÉú Association season with a 17th place finish in the GS at Sugarloaf in Maine. He was in the top-25 at the Harvard Carnival the following week before skiing out of consecutive giant slaloms at the Dartmouth ߣÏÈÉúway on Feb. 8 and 9. Then he finished as the second Boston College skier on the final day of the Dartmouth weekend, taking 23rd in the slalom. 

“The season went really well,” Kirwood said. “I mean, I wish I could have done better but it was more of an adjustment year just getting used to the circuit and the mountains out there.” 

After the Carnival season concluded, Kirwood came to Colorado to chase other races. He racked up two podiums at Copper Mountain and Winter Park before finishing out the academic year and returning for a summer job at the Red Lion.

“I kind of have the reputation right now of being a west-coast skier,” he admitted when asked about the disparity between some of his results. “I think a lot of it is knowing the mountains out there and knowing where you can gain speed, where you need to let off and I just didn’t really know it that well. The other thing is the mountains out there are so much flatter than they are out here.”  

In the spring, Kirwood was named Eagles’ Rookie of the Year, perhaps the first signature moment of his own career. At his own school.

“I think it was a little rebellion to go his own way,” said Buglione. “He is a rebel, and follows his own path, but has an amazing ability to handle pressure and rise to the occasion.”

“Nick has been a fantastic addition to the BC ski team,” Norden added. 

Going into the 2024 season, Kirwood’s vision of being part of a rebuilding program is going exactly according to plan. The team sent Bode Flanigan to NCAAs last season, where the then-sophomore finished 21st in the slalom and 32nd in the GS. Kirwood said the Eagles are bringing in five talented new athletes next year, two of whom are transfers who also made it to Nationals last year. 

“So it’s kind of doing what I wanted it to do and setting up a train for BC to become one of the best college skiing places in the country,” Kirwood stated. “And that’s kind of what I wanted to do: be around all the different stuff, and be in a bigger place and meet more people — and that was the most important thing to me.” 

“(He) has become a leader on the team — advocating for good assistant coaches and recruitment of upcoming athletes,” said Buglione, who has embraced the BC squad as well, hosting the entire team and coaches over Thanksgiving.

Kirwood was recently selected to represent the U.S. at the World University Games in Torino in January. He’ll be joined by fellow SSCV alumni Liv Moritz and Jack Reich.

“A goal for me is to go out there and win it,” Kirwood said. 

Reflecting on the past and looking ahead to the future

Sports has shaped Kirwood’s perspective; he understands the importance of stewarding his talent and maximizing his opportunities. 

“Just to be privileged to travel around the world and see all that stuff is super meaningful,” he said. “For me at school, doing BC skiing, our workouts — it’s something I have to do and it’s something I want to do and I’m here for it. And if I don’t do it I’m letting my teammates down.”

But if he’d been given the chance to play soccer instead of ski gates in college, would he have taken it?

“Yeah I would have,” Kirwood said bluntly. “Soccer was my favorite sport growing up for sure. All the way through high school — I loved it. I loved the team aspect of it.”

“The kid had the talent to play collegiately,” said Ives.

“I wish I could have played in Denver and played on a club team and seen how far I could have gone with it,” Kirwood said. “But just because I lived in Vail I was kind of born into ski racing and obviously my parents are huge ski racers so it was kind of just part of the family culture, which I don’t mind.”

With thousands of athletes vying for DI roster spots, Jeff Kirwood recognized that a recruit coming from Vail is “nearly impossible.”

“I think we supported him in all of his sports (soccer, lacrosse, basketball and skiing),” he continued. “But, on a relative basis, he is a much better ski racer with lots of talent and potential.”

Reflecting on his high school days, Kirwood still cherishes several fond memories. One favorite was beating the Gore Rangers’ chief rivals, Colorado Academy, in Denver. His least favorite was getting a red card in a game where his team led Battle Mountain 1-0 and ended up losing 2-1. The loss to No. 1 Jefferson Academy in his final game stings, too. 

“I knew we could have won it,” he said of the 2021 state quarterfinal match. 

When comparing Kirwood to the current local crop of players, it’s fair to say Battle Mountain’s Jakob Methvin has more of a nose for the goal and Grey Glowacki makes head-shaking, crisp passes. Ives said Kirwood’s heir, Rutley Heinneman, had a greater knack for finding creases and creatively putting the ball in the back of the net, too. But none of those players possessed Kirwood’s sheer on-ball wizardry.

Ives said their passionate approach to the game is what sets both Heinneman and Kirwood apart.

“Whether it’s a practice, a simple drill or the state championship game, they’re just consistent,” he said. “They show up and bring the same intensity and focus every single day. I think that’s what really makes a great athlete — your ability to do the simple things with great focus.” 

For Kirwood, the best part of high school sports wasn’t even the competition. 

“The most fun part about it was being with all my friends, and being on a team,” he said. “I miss that so much.”

This April, he came home and connected with several former teammates. One day, he chilled with Beck Sapp and Mack Dorf in the morning and played a round of golf with Sebastian Kolhofer later in the afternoon. 

“We’re all still in touch,” he said. “It’s awesome.” 

Clearly, Kirwood values his Vail upbringing.

“One thing I’ve realized is that when I come back home, I really appreciate this town more,” he said. “You really appreciate the beauty of it.”

When the next ‘Where Are They Now’ story gets written, where will Kirwood be?  

“I want to have a legacy,” he answered. “I want to be known as the guy who came into BC and really changed things around and set the tone to help grow the team.”

“When an athlete trains without seeking recognition from others, that’s when they can really ski free and perform at their best,” Norden said. “I hope Nick continues to be himself throughout his entire ski racing career”.

“Nick is a talented athlete and he loves to compete more than anything. He always rises to the occasion and thrives under pressure,” said Jeff Kirwood. “We could not be more proud of him as parents. We are excited to see where the next three years take him at BC.”  

“Nick seems to pull things off all the time,” Buglione added. “Some people have said you can’t make it in skiing from Boston College, and I believe if anyone can do it, Nicky can do it.”  

One thing Kirwood can guarantee: he’ll doing all of his sports for as long as he can. 

“I love it,” he said. “And I live for it.”