Quadruple Threat: TC West Quadruplets Chase Alpine Skiing Glory

In Michigan, people tend to pay attention when a skier with the last name “Lewandowski” shows up to a race. That’s because, between 2019 and 2024, brothers Aiden and Caleb Lewandowski won a combined five individual Division 1 state titles in alpine skiing. They also led the boys ski team at Traverse City West Senior High to its first-ever state championship in 2021, and then added two more team titles to the school’s trophy case in 2022 and 2023.

The question now is this: If two Lewandowski athletes could make that much of an impact on West’s skiing program, what can an additional four do?

Meet Summer, Cam, Dane, and Brock Lewandowski, four standout skiers at West who are better known in the local and statewide ski communities as “the Quads.” The four are quadruplets, an ultra-rare phenomenon, just in terms of the raw science. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, only 128 sets of quadruplets were born in the United States in 2023, out of nearly 3.6 million total births. (For comparison’s sake, that same year saw 110,000 pairs of twins and 2,500 sets of triplets.)

Rarer still is the shared athletic prowess of the Lewandowski Quads, who are all following in their older brothers’ ski tracks. A year ago, both the West boys and the West girls notched runner-up finishes in the D1 state championships for alpine skiing, with the Lewandowski name peppering the results sheet. On the boys side, Cam and Dane achieved top-10 finishes in both the slalom and the giant slalom. On the girls side, Summer was state runner-up in the giant slalom. The three also earned first-team all-state honors from the Michigan High School Ski Coaches Association.

This coming Monday, February 23, all four Quads will compete at the Division 1 state finals at Boyne Mountain, and they’re chomping at the bit to turn those runner-up finishes from last year into state titles. Despite their combined prowess on the ski hill, Summer, Cam, Dane, and Brock are cognizant of the fact that they so far have zero state titles between them – and that neither Titans team has won a state championship since their older brothers graduated.

Aiden and Caleb, it turns out, aren’t shy about asserting those bragging rights on a regular basis.

“They won a lot of stuff, and they definitely like to rub it in,” Cam tells The Ticker. “When we were starting out on the team, they would always come up to us and say, ‘Gee, I wonder if you guys are going to do as well as us!’ It definitely has pushed us to work harder and get better at the sport.”

“It became a thing of, ‘Well, you’ve got to continue the family legacy. You don’t want to end it now!’” Summer adds

The Quads’ odds of bringing home some hardware next week are looking pretty good. The Titan boys won a regional title earlier this month, edging out both Marquette and Traverse City Central – the teams that won state titles in 2025 and 2024, respectively. West’s girls, meanwhile, were regional runners-up, trailing defending state champs TC Central by a single point.

A big ace in the hole for the boys team is Brock, who sat out the entire 2025 season with a broken leg. He’s back with a vengeance this year, joining Cam and Dane in the top 10 for both the slalom and the giant slalom at regionals. His brothers are confident he’ll be the difference-maker that gets them to the top of the podium next week.

Especially with Brock back in the mix, the Lewandowski parents, Tonya and Jeremy, say this season has been a joy. They particularly enjoy interacting with confounded parents and coaches at ski meets.

“We hear a lot of comments like, ‘These Lewandowskis! They just keep coming! How many of them could there possibly be?!’” Tonya laughs.

That question is similar to the one Tonya and Jeremy were asking themselves 17 years ago, when they found out they had quadruplets on the way. As Tonya tells the story, Jeremy “went mute for a couple days” after hearing the news. “But once he started talking again, we never looked back,” she laughs. “What we tell people to this day is that we feel like we are chosen to be parents of quadruplets. That's what we were handed, and we were ready to go full steam ahead.”

Part of “going full steam ahead” was figuring out a way to keep six kids occupied after school every day.

“Especially in the winter months, with six kids in a dark house around 5:30pm, Jeremy and I would look at each other and say, ‘What are we going to do to entertain them until bedtime?” Tonya says.

“Basketball didn’t work out for [Aiden and Caleb], but we had some friends with children in the Grand Traverse Ski Club, and they suggested we give it a try,” Jeremy adds.

“That was when the magic started,” Tonya continues. “Jeremy brought out the Home Depot lights, and we got shovels and Little Tikes tables, and we made our own little winter wonderland in the backyard. The kids all had plastic skis and snowboards, and that’s how they got started. And then our friends introduced us to Hickory Hills, and before long, the Quads were just ripping around over there.”

All these years later, those childhood memories are fueling state title hopes.

“Those early Hickory days with our early friends were so fun, and are definitely what got us to fall in love with the sport,” Dane muses. “That love for skiing as kids set the foundation, and it’s what carried us into to ski racing and what keeps us doing it to this day.”

Pictured, from left to right: Dane, Summer, Brock, Cam