Skiing has taken this champion skier from Muskego around North America. Where will it take him next?

Noah Bindas enjoyed putting on the pads and playing football for Muskego High School.

What big-boned, athletic sophomore – if he was going to play – wouldn’t want to be a part of such a storied program?

He liked baseball too.

But life is about choices, sometimes tough ones, and Bindas, now a senior, made his.

If he stuck with football, no one was going to invite him to an NFL playoff game to test the field for snags in the turf, no matter his high school success. He wasn’t going to run the bases before the first pitch at the All-Star Game.

Alpine skiing was Bindas’ first love. Six-time Olympic medalist Bode Miller was his idol.

So skiing would be the sport to which Bindas would dedicate himself. The sport in which he would win his state title. The sport that gave him the best chance to continue to advance and chase his dreams. The sport in which he – even as a high schooler – would get to rub elbows with the best.

“I was always pretty fast, right from when I started,” said Bindas, the individual champion last month at the Wisconsin State Alpine Ski Championships in La Crosse. “I started racing when I was 4 or 5 years old and I was always pretty good.

“I think probably when I was 13 or 14 when we first started going out to Colorado. That was when we decided, OK, Wisconsin’s given me – the competition and the hills and everything it has to offer, it’s given me what it needs to. … We were, like, OK, if you’re going to make this switch you’re going to be pretty committed to it.”

The time since has been a bit of a blur.

The youngest of six kids in what Mark Bindas calls “a his, hers and ours” family, Noah has benefited from the lessons learned through the competitive journeys of three older brothers and two sisters who competed on the slopes.

“It looked like a ski shop in the basement,” said Mark, whose position as a ski patrol member, instructor and coach helped get the family out regularly at Alpine Valley and then Granite Peak. “It still looks like a ski shop in the basement, but now they’re all his skis.”

Noah has become a remote student at Muskego, earning A’s while training nearly year round in Aspen, Colorado, and traveling to competitions around the United States and Canada and also taking virtual classes at UW-Milwaukee.

“I definitely want to make the Olympic team,” he said. “There’s four levels of the U.S. Ski team. There’s the A, B, C and D. You make the team and most of the time you make the D team and you work your way up and then the A team is the Olympic team. So I definitely want to be able to have the opportunity to ski at the Olympics.”

After winning the state title, Bindas skipped the U.S. High School Nationals to compete in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard U18 Eastern national championships. This past extended weekend he raced in the North American Cup at Whistler Mountain in British Columbia.

The next step toward reaching his 2026 Olympic goal is to start scoring top-10 finishes, top-fives and then wins in the Nor-Ams. Junior worlds, U21 championships and European Cup would follow, and the top step would be World Cup.

Between the state championships and the U18s Bindas had the opportunity to ski as a forerunner, testing the course, at the men’s downhill World Cup meet at Aspen Mountain, where speeds top 80 mph.

“That was the best, most amazing experience of my life,” said Bindas, whose connection came via the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club, to which he belongs.

“My biggest surprise was how many people went into (putting on) the whole thing. There was hundreds if not thousands of people setting up the race hill and the bleachers and stands and everything around the whole event.

“I was in the start gate and I was nervous. It felt pretty real to me. And it was just cool being around those guys, just seeing what the top athletes in the sport look like even.”

Given experiences like those and the opportunities Bindas has had, a Wisconsin high school competition might seem like a comedown.

It was a rare hands-on connection to Muskego, though, that allowed him “to feel like a normal high school kid.” Bindas won the slalom and super giant slalom and finished second in the giant slalom, and Muskego placed sixth in Division 2.

“I thought it was super, one of the coolest moments of my life,” Bindas said. “I did not overlook that, and it was just really cool being there and being with my team.

“It just took a little of the pressure off (being a team event). But I was still in the start gate (thinking) ‘yeah, gotta go.’ And my goal was to win. I wanted to win that state overall title, and that’s what I did and I was super happy about that.

“I came into that like it was the World Cup.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin high school ski champion from Muskego has Olympic hopes