AVSC chief Mark Godomsky recruited home, takes job with Gould Academy

With his youngest son graduating from Aspen High School and Maine calling, Mark Godomsky is heading home.

The Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club announced on Thursday afternoon that the executive director would return to where he grew up, went to college, worked at ski resorts, coached skiing (and football), and had been offered a new job at Gould Academy, the private boarding school in Maine’s White Mountains he had left in 2016 to lead AVSC.

AVSC Board President Ryan Smalls broke the news in an email to club members, noting that Godomsky and wife Heidi were driven largely by desire to be closer to family and close friends, and that Smalls could see just how difficult their decision was. Aspen has its pull on the heart, as well, and this is where sons Max, Ben, and Nick spent formative years.

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Godomsky will start Aug. 1 as Gould’s athletic director, and AVSC will move on with a search for its next executive director, with a process including a search committee, a position statement for the qualities they’ll seek during possibly a long summer’s recruitment, and eventually their next top executive.

Gould Academy also announced their big news landing Godomsky, who formerly had directed their ski sports program. Now he’ll lead the full athletic department at the academy.

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“I am thrilled to be returning home to my roots in Maine,” he told Gould for their announcement. “Under new leadership, Gould is an industry leader in on-snow sports. While I’ll be overseeing the athletic program in its entirety, I’m excited to pick up where I left off, implementing my vision for the Competition Program when I was at Gould earlier in my career.”

He hadn’t responded to a tight window of phone or email messages from The Aspen Times late Thursday evening by press time.

The Gould announcement touted Godomsky’s success in the past seven years, saying he “restructured the organization from the ground up. In that time, he’s also helped to raise $2.7 million annually to help support young athletes pursuing their passions.”

Gould apparently recruited him to come back.

“I pro-actively reached out to Mark for this position for three reasons: his student-centered focus; his track record of success; and his unparalleled ability to inspire his team and accelerate program growth,” said current Director of Athletics Ben Kamilewicz, who will take a new role at Gould. “He is the absolute right person at the right time. We’re so grateful to have him back in the fold.”

Godomsky noted that the U.S. Ski & Snowboard program designated Gould as a Gold Certified Club last year.

“That’s what I saw when I came back to visit,” he said in the Gould announcement. “I’m excited to continue to grow this strong program for all student-athletes at Gould.”

Before arriving in Gould the first time in 2007, he coached at Carrabassett Valley Academy, Bates College, and for 13 years as the alpine program director and assistant football coach at Colby College — all, of course, in Maine. He got his college education at Bates.

In a column in The Aspen Times shortly after he arrived in Aspen, he noted similarities between Maine and the premier Colorado ski town, joking: “Hear me out on this one.”

“Both have extremely tight-knit communities of people who often have deep roots stretching back for generations. Both thrive on outdoor activities (although one’s weather is a lot more conducive to this than the other’s…). Both value tradition and history, and skiing is a critically interwoven piece of that history.”

“I applaud Mark’s transparency as this process has unfolded,” Smalls said in his message to the AVSC members. “One thing that is abundantly clear from our discussions is just how much AVSC and this community mean to Mark and his family and how difficult this decision was to make.”