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Bruce Colon - Coach, founder of the New York Ski Educational Foundation

Bruce Colon
Passing Date

Bruce Colon, lifelong coach across a variety of sports, and founder of the New York Ski Educational Foundation, passed away on May 24, 2025. He was 84.

Colon grew up in Athol, Massachusetts, and competed on the ski team at Paul Smith’s College in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, from which he graduated with an associate degree in forestry in 1960. He served in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1964, then earned his bachelor of science from the University of New Hampshire in 1967. Colon returned to the Adirondacks in 1967 to teach and coach football, golf and Alpine skiing at Saranac Lake High School.

From 1968 to 1977, Colon was assistant headmaster at Northwood School in Lake Placid, New York, where he oversaw the history department and coached football and Alpine skiing, among other sports. By his second year, he had led the football team to an undefeated season, and two members of his ski team were selected for the U.S. National Junior Ski Team. Colon also played key roles in transitioning Northwood School to a co-educational institution and establishing its women’s sports programs. He next served as the first headmaster of Carrabassett Valley Academy in Maine, then headed Alpine ski programs at Mt. Bachelor, Oregon; Mt. Alyeska, Alaska; and Aspen, Snowmass and Crested Butte in Colorado. Dozens of Colon’s athletes went on to compete and coach at national, international and Olympic levels. In 1977, he was appointed women’s Alpine Director for the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.

One of Colon’s lasting legacies is as a founder of the New York Ski Educational Foundation (NYSEF). Since its inception in 1973, the Whiteface Alpine Training Center—later renamed NYSEF—has become a nationally recognized program that has trained thousands of youth in Alpine, Nordic, freestyle and snowboard programs.

In 2003, Colon was honored with U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s Tom Reynolds Award for Lifetime Achievement in Coaching. In 2018, he was an inaugural inductee into the NYSEF Hall of Fame.