College soccer or the Winter Olympics.

Every new year poses questions. That was what Skyler Davis drew at the start of 2014.

Take one last flyer on his Olympic dream, a win-or-that’s-it chance to join the American ski team in Sochi, or embrace an uncertain future in a sport that needed less than a week to leave him aching and frustrated?

“If I leave right now there’s no way I play on this team — I need to decide if I’m going to go win this race or I’m going to try to make a spot on this team,” Davis said, rehashing his thoughts at the time. “I decided for me, in my position, I wanted to play soccer.”

A year and a half later, the Jericho native must resolve a different question. How does he want to wear his captain’s armband for today’s season opener with the University of Vermont men’s soccer team?

Unlikely as it might have seemed when he joined the Catamounts for that initial indoor season, the former U.S. Ski Team member isn’t just a part of coach Jesse Cormier’s UVM squad. Davis, 23, has established himself as a leader, one of two captains along with fellow junior Jackson Dayton.

“He was unanimous with the team and he was unanimous with the coaches,” Cormier said.

“He’s a great communicator and he’s mature and he knows what the guys need, what they need to hear, how they interact,” Cormier said. “I think the best leaders are the guys that can tap into everybody and get the best out of them, whether they’re on the field or off the field. That’s what he does.”

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Reaching that point, however, was far from a smooth — or intuitive — progression.

Davis’s world-class athletic pedigree could only make up for so much when he returned to the game after a six-year hiatus.

“I was in a rough place for about a month and a half,” said Davis, who attended Stratton Mountain School to focus on skiing. “I really did think I was going to get cut.

“My knees were hurting, my shins were hurting … Nordic skiing is completely different from any sport where there’s cutting and lateral movement at all,” he said. “And I went straight from just Nordic skiing in cold winter to indoor turf, two-a-days, lifting as much as possible.”

Seeing the team’s depth and talent at forward, his position during club and high school playing days, the 6-foot-3 Davis transitioned to defense. And he didn’t have to merely regain his touch on the ball to get up to speed. He had to recondition his body.

“The soccer piece, there’s such a need to burst and to have the agility and the footwork and the coordination that is not necessarily important for the Nordic guys,” Cormier said. “So the fact that he’s transformed himself — I would say I’ve never seen this before. I’ve done this for 20 years and I’ve never seen a guy transform himself like Skyler has.”

Dayton, too, has been similarly impressed by how Davis has carved out a place with the team.

“He’s been able to use his size, his physicality — his passion, too,” Dayton said. “To be on the U.S. Nordic team you’ve got to be pretty passionate about it, you’ve got to really care, and he’s brought that to soccer.”

But Davis didn’t embark on the process on his own, either.

With more than a half-decade of rust on Davis’s soccer credentials, Far Post director Todd Kingsbury vouched for his former player, helping to open avenues with Vermont, UMass and Dartmouth. And Brad Cole, his good friend and former club teammate, eyed a return to the UVM squad himself after two years away from the program.

“We decided in the fall. We were hanging out a bunch and we were like, alright, let’s do this — if we go back we can both re-enter at the same time,” Davis said.

Their buddy system paid off.

Cole, with one season of eligibility left, rejoined the Catamounts last fall as a tri-captain and finished second on the team in scoring. Davis, wanting to enrich his college experience by playing a varsity sport, earned a seat in the locker room, his future secure with the program.

“Our lockers were right next to each other and everything,” said Davis, who inherited Cole’s No. 6 jersey for the upcoming season.

Not bad for someone who, as a soccer player, had never appeared on the Catamounts’ recruiting radar, according to Cormier.

“When he started I was (thinking) I’m not sure this is ever going to happen,” Cormier said. “But he comes in and he does individual work, he does his own stuff. He works with the strength coaches. He’s changed everything. And he’s competitive out there.”

As if to underscore Davis’s own path to a place on a Division I soccer roster, a telling question came up during a recent team meeting: Who in the room had been a team captain in high school?

“Basically everyone raised their hand — except for me,” Davis said.

The one player who had been on the brink of making the U.S. Olympic team, who had yet to play a minute for the Catamounts, once again stood out amongst his peers — another layer to his collected wisdom.

“It’s good for me to have the perspective of sitting on the bench for a year, not even being able to play, being the worst player on the field, and now being in a better position to help the team win,” Davis said. “It’s good to have that sense of what these guys are feeling.”

While his on-field role with the Catamounts largely depends on how the season unfolds, Davis has taken care of the rest.

“Is he where I want him? In some ways yes, in some ways no,” Cormier said. “But he’s certainly earned the right to be a leader of this team, he’s certainly earned the right to have a role — at what level, we’ll see — but he has his niche on the team and he’s earned it.”

This story was originally published Aug. 28, 2015. Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eadanforth