Sensing his brother needed a winter outlet for his
“hyperactivity,” Danny recommended Alex sign up
for the ski team at Hidden Valley, N.J., now called
Mountain Creek.
“New Jersey wasn’t exactly a hotbed for ski rac-
ing,” Cranmer says. “But I was really lucky to have
exceptional coaches like Jeff Pier, [who had tons
of high-level ski racing experience]. He helped me
move from getting last in those New Jersey races as
a J4 to winning them as a J3, and before long I was
at Junior Olympics in Vermont.”
Cranmer says he finished around third to last (“and
the other two guys hiked”) at Junior Olympics, but
the experience introduced him to fast skiers and,
more importantly, ski academies.
Without his parents knowing, Cranmer returned to
New Jersey that spring and surreptitiously applied to
several academies with some help from his favorite
English teacher. When invitations to visit campuses
started arriving at his house, Cranmer confessed his
scheme to his parents, who eventually recognized
his passion and relented to a tour of New England
academies.
“We went to a bunch of schools,” Cranmer says,
“but we immediately loved it at Burke. We were re-
ally inspired by [then Head of School] Finn Gunder-
sen and everyone else we met.”
Cranmer says he spent the majority of the next four
years getting his “[butt] kicked” in races while com-
peting against kids with much more experience, but
he stayed in love with the sport as he improved —
and discovered his future profession along the way.
“It was actually Burke that helped me discover my
love for acting,” Cranmer says. “In the spring of my
senior year, we put on a full production of Neil Si-
mon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” at Lyndon State
Performing in Anton Chekhov’s
“The Seagull” at the Williamstown
Cranmer with coach Jeff
Pier in 1989 after winning a
GS at Hidden Valley, N.J.
