hired German émigré Hans "Peppi" Teichner to be its manager in 1946. These steps were decisive for skiing in the Midwest, culminating in the opening of the local ski area Sugar Loaf in 1947. Peppi Teichner, father of television news correspondent Martha Teichner, taught at the school and coached its students in skiing. Privately owned until 1963, the school became a non-profit corporation with a board of directors upon the Hueys’ creation of The Leelanau Schools and Library Foundation, Inc., to which they gave the camps and the school with its present grounds. In 1967 Cora Beals donated the land that became "faculty row." The non-profit status eased fundraising efforts. The school grounds were exempted from eminent domain associated with the formation of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which surrounds the campus. Over time its name was shortened to the singular form: The Leelanau School. At its peak in 1970, the school had 167 enrolled students. School enrollment stabilized at close to 100 students as the 1970s drew to a close. Athletics Traditionally nicknamed Indians, Leelanau students chose to abandon the now-controversial moniker and adopted the name Thunderbirds in 2003 after consultation with members of Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. It competes as a Class D (smallest of four classes) school in the Michigan High School Athletic Association. In past years, the school fielded teams in cross country, football (until 1975), soccer, volleyball, basketball, alpine skiing, baseball, softball, tennis, golf and track and field, but in recent years has only fielded tennis, golf and volleyball squads. Leelanau was a charter member of the Northwest Conference and garnered most of the Northwest's track titles during its tenure, including every single one in the 1950s, but was forced to leave that organization for the Cherryland Conference when its enrollment dropped in the mid-1970s. Traditional Cherryland rivals include Lake Leelanau St. Mary and Northport. A newer rivalry has begun with Traverse City Christian School since that school's founding in 1995. Leelanau pioneered alpine skiing as a Michigan high school varsity sport during the 1950s and was instrumental in its adoption as an official MHSAA championship sport, but was forced to abandon the sport when the nearby Sugar Loaf Resort closed in 2000. Leelanau was the MHSAA boys' skiing state runner-up (open classification) in 1992, beaten at the state finals only by Traverse City (now Traverse City Central), a school over