When Kris Hodgkins goes to the winter ski carnivals, the opposition marvels at her.

With virtually no training and absolutely no skiing during the week, she has been a consistent top-ten finisher and has turned in such performances as sixth place three weeks ago at the University of Vermont, where the top four places were taken by former members of the U.S. Ski Team.

"The people I know at Middlebury and Dartmouth can't believe I can just put on skis on the weekend," she said this week.

Hodgkins has been skiing against the best in the east since she was nine. She began skiing at six. "I would have started earlier, but with me being the fifth, my mother got tired of going up the T-bar holding kids between her legs."

Her racing experience began at Sugarloaf in Maine, where her family took regular inland trips from their home in coastal Rockland. There she participated in Eastern threes and fours races with skiers up to 13 years old.

"I wasn't a child prodigy or anything," she insists, "I was never the best skier."

At 14, youngsters are permitted to branch out from slalom and giant slalom races into the higher speeds of downhilling. "You have to be a little crazy to like downhilling," she said, but it turned out to be Kris's best event.

"Academics didn't really come first for me in high school," she said, adding. "I spent some thing like ten days at school between Thanksgiving and March. I would play field hockey, study and be Miss All-Around Student in the fall and then take off for the winter."

Finally, she decided to leave public high school to go to Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont for her senior year--a school that, despite expecting some academics from its students, makes no bones about being a school purely for skiers.

"It's a really intriguing place," she said. "There are forty people there at all different levels of proficiency. I'm still very close to them."

The survival of her friendships is evident every winter carnival. Many of her Burke classmates have gone on to the other schools in Division I such as Middlebury, Dartmouth and Williams, so every weekend is an alumnae reunion.

"When all the teams are eating in a dining hall there is usually a Middlebury table, a Dartmouth table, and then there's a Burke table. I don't know if I'm alienating people, but I don't spend much time with the people here. I would say that 70 per cent of my college enjoyment is in seeing my old friends," she added.

So why go to Harvard when the education is as good elsewhere and the skiing is much better? "I felt I'd gotten as high as I could go at Burke, I wasn't going to ever be better than some of those people. I'd given serious skiing a shot there. It's funny, though as I go down the course now I always feel off balance, out of control, like my weight is on my inside ski. But I'm finishing closer behind the same people that were ahead of me when I was at Burke, I guess they've all slowed down," she laughs.

It would stand to reason that if Kris could ski everyday she might improve still further, but she doesn't think so. "It is a matter of being relaxed now. Sometimes I'm amazed to find out how much fun skiing actually is."