NSS alumni to shine on the Olympic stage

Eighteen athletes.

Nine sports.

Three countries.

And one very proud alma mater.

When the Olympic torch is lit tomorrow to officially open the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, the National Sport School (NSS) will be exceptionally well represented.

In fact, nearly one out of every 11 members of the Team Canada contingent in Italy are graduates of the sport-supporting high school at Canada Olympic Park.

NSS Principal Rob Jewan, now in his 11th year, sees the number of former students competing on the world’s biggest stage as certainly no coincidence.

“It really does kind of meet the mission of what the school was started for: Trying to balance high-performance sport with academics,” says Jewan. “All of the students that are there (at the Olympics) are high-school graduates, and they’ve also excelled in their sport. As the school has grown and been able to expand to more sports and more athletes, I think it’s been a real benefit to the community to have a school like this.”

Despite ongoing class instruction and an eight-hour time difference between Calgary and the 2026 host cities, Jewan and the NSS are getting behind the Games in full force.

Spirit is being spread with Olympic-themed Teacher Advisor (or TA) events during homeroom periods, and you better believe they’re all keeping tabs on the athletes they call their own.

“I think the biggest piece is that we have some TVs in areas with the Olympics running on CBC,” says Jewan. “We’ll always have the Games on. We had the curling on (yesterday), and we’ll celebrate and focus in, especially on the days our athletes are competing. We all like to keep track of how everybody’s doing.”

Among the NSS alums is Yohan Eskrick-Parkinson. The 25-year-old attended Northwestern University on a diving scholarship and narrowly missed out on the 2024 Summer Games for Team Jamaica. He then made the switch from being a diver on the Jamaican national team to sliding in a bobsleigh while wearing the Red and White.

In-person studies are not a daily occurrence for any NSS student, but there surely isn’t anyone who submitted two years’ worth of assignments further from campus than Dane Menzies. The Calgary-born snowboarder, who grew up in Canmore, received New Zealand citizenship through his father and therefore joined the Kiwi team with training taking place on the island nation.

Dylan Marineau, a freestyle skier who graduated from the NSS in 2016, will become a second-generation Olympian when he makes his own Olympic debut next week. His father, Dennis, competed for Canada in bobsleigh at the 1992 Games in Albertville, France.

And some of the 2026 Canadian teams within specific sports have a heavy NSS presence. Four of the six luge athletes and three of the four ski jumpers currently in Italy came from the school at WinSport.

With many incredible individuals to aspire to, the current crop of NSS students can’t help but be encouraged to continue pursuing their dreams.

“I think it does give them that little extra motivation,” says Jewan. “I think it really does give them that hope that they can reach that level at some point. It obviously is a very difficult goal to reach, but it does inspire all the athletes here to get to that next step.”