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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: Burke Mountain Academy

  • Over Before It Really Began: Burke and Sweetser Part Ways

    Over Before It Really Began: Burke and Sweetser Part Ways

    The logo for Burke Mountain Academy in East Burke, Vt., shows both alpine and nordic ski racers side by side in this photo from December 2016. (Photo: @BurkeMountainAcademy/Instagram)

    A recently promised revival of the nordic program at Vermont’s Burke Mountain Academy (BMA) now seems to be on hold, following a recent change in leadership and what appears to be the school’s subsequent decision to cut ties with its recently hired nordic coach Will Sweetser. As the first day of the 2017/2018 school year approaches in less than a month, Sweetser remains in Wyoming, far from northern Vermont. And the school remains without a publicly announced plan for the future for its nordic ski program.

    Revival and retreat?

    For several months earlier this year, the future of nordic skiing at a private school in northern Vermont that describes itself as “the preeminent ski academy” was bright. A press release on the BMA site, dated March 7, proclaimed, “BMA Revives Nordic Program with Olympic-Level Coach.”

    The school announced that Sweetser had been hired as head nordic coach “effective immediately in preparation for the 2017-2018 academic year.” Then-Head of School Jory Macomber enthused about the school’s “revived Nordic program,” and said that the school had “always … aim[ed] at delivering world class alpine and Nordic racers.”

    Two months later, on May 9, the Facebook page for BMA Nordic announced “The first camp of the new era,” to be held in late June, reflecting this nordic revival.

    Later that month, Sweetser was featured in a May 26 article on FasterSkier. “We felt really welcomed there,” Sweetser said of the Burke community. He dismissed concerns that the school’s nordic program had lain fallow during the 2016/2017 season (there were “no athletes and no coaches” on the nordic side that year), saying that “the board of directors seemed totally disinclined to let nordic die, so I feel like there is a tremendous support for nordic at the school.”

    Sweetser appears to have been employed by BMA as recently as late June. An archived version of the school’s coaching staff website (archived on June 21) lists Sweetser as head nordic coach. (The same URL, burkemtnacademy.org/skiing/nordic/coaching-staff/, now redirects to a site ending in skiing/alpine/coaching-staff/. This page lists 17 different coaches, none of them with an explicit nordic affiliation. The total student body at Burke Mountain Academy is 66 kids. The school claims nine “teaching faculty” and 16 “coaching/athletic staff” on its website.)

    June 23 screenshot from BMA Nordic Facebook page. 

    As of June 22, Sweetser was still listed (in both the cached and current versions of the site) as running the BMA Nordic Assessment Camp, held on the Burke campus from June 21-25. And a June 23 Facebook post for BMA Nordic asked, “Want to find out what Burke Mountain Academy Nordic can do for you? We’d love to help!” while giving Sweetser’s BMA email address as the point of contact.

    There have been no updates on the BMA Nordic Facebook page since June 25, when a post described the final day of the Nordic Assessment Camp and looked to the future: “Great finish to a fantastic camp. Yoga, hike up Burke Mountain and some planning for the future. Thanks BMA (especially Dave, our chef), can’t wait to come back!”

    If something then happened between Sweetser and BMA that led to or reflected a relationship souring, it happened fast. FasterSkier spoke with Sweetser by phone less than three weeks later, last Friday, July 14.

    “I am no longer employed by Burke Mountain Academy,” Sweetser told FasterSkier at that time. “And I can’t comment further,” he added, alluding to the possibility of pending litigation.

    No comment from Burke Mountain Academy

    FasterSkier spoke with BMA Director of Development & Communications Jodi Flanagan on Friday afternoon. “I don’t have information on that,” Flanagan said by phone when asked about Sweetser’s employment status. She pledged to provide contact information for someone who could answer these questions.

    Flanagan subsequently provided an email address for Head of School Willy Booker. She stated that Booker was traveling in Europe, but would be glad to answer questions for this story. 

    FasterSkier emailed Booker last Friday (evening European time), and again on Tuesday, with a number of questions. On Wednesday, Booker wrote back, in full, “Thank you for your note. I’m traveling abroad with limited access to email. I will respond upon my return the first week of August.”

    Phone messages left with a number of other coaches within the BMA athletic program were not returned.

    Turnover at the top

    After what the school has described as “15 years of stable leadership” under a single man, BMA has seen at least four different leaders within the last thirteen months.

    Will Sweetser with his wife Sarah Dominick and their 1-year-old daughter, Aesklyn, near their home in Cody, Wyo. (Courtesy photo)

    Former Headmaster Kirk Dwyer left that position effective June 2016, the school announced a full year in advance, vacating a position he had held since 2000. Dwyer was followed by Macomber, in a position that by this point had the job title of head of school. But less than ten months later Macomber was on his way out; a BMA press release dated April 13, 2017, said that he was resigning for “personal reasons.” Steve Berlack was announced as interim head of school for the next few months. 

    Two months later, a June 2 press release announced the school’s fourth leader in roughly a year, Booker. The press release stated that Booker would be the next head of school “effective July 31, 2017.” In practice, Booker is currently listed on the BMA staff directory as head of school, and was media representative Flanagan’s recommendation for an appropriate person to answer FasterSkier’s questions about Sweetser and the school’s nordic program.

    Sweetser “started having conversations with Burke in late February,” he told FasterSkier, and accepted the position at BMA on “March 3 or 4.” Macomber was the BMA head of school at the time that Sweetser would have been discussing his potential employment with the school. By the time Sweetser was no longer employed by BMA in late June or early July, first Berlack and then Booker had assumed that role.

    Booker gave only the polite placeholder response quoted above to a follow-up email asking whether there is any connection between a change in school leadership and a change in Sweetser’s employment status.

    What happens next

    As Sweetser intimated, there may be litigation between the parties in the future. As of Tuesday afternoon, docket searches suggested that no case involving Sweetser and BMA had been filed in either Vermont state or federal court. (There are numerous steps that often precede the filing of a formal civil lawsuit, such as letters between the parties and attempts to reach a settlement without resorting to litigation.)

    The future of the BMA nordic program, which dates back over 30 years and counts U.S. Ski Team athletes Liz Stephen and Ida Sargent and NCAA champion Sam Tarling as its most prominent alumni, is also unclear.

    Sweetser said in May that “Priority number one” for his first year there was “to recruit.” He added, “My first priority is rekindling that core group [of nordic athletes]. We do have interest. Two kids are committed to coming and I am in discussions with several others that I think we will start the year between four and six athletes for next year. My goal is to have enough athletes on campus to have a consistent group of somewhere between 18 to 24 athletes. I recognize that is going to take a while, but that will be a program that is several coaches, full-age cohort in both men’s and women’s high school ages. I am very optimistic about the potential.”

    (FasterSkier has been unable to contact any athletes who were recruited to BMA for nordic skiing with Sweetser this fall. If you would like to speak with FasterSkier about this, you may email gavin (at) fasterskier.com.)

    This potential comes with a steep price tag: annual tuition at BMA is over $55,000 for 2017/2018 (down to $42,000 for a day student needing tuition alone, sans room and board). “Approximately one third” of the 66-person student body received financial aid in 2016/2017.

    The fall semester for the 2017/2018 academic year begins on Aug. 14. 

  • Q&A: Burke New Head Coach Will Sweetser

    Q&A: Burke New Head Coach Will Sweetser

    Will Sweetser snaps a selfie with his wife Sarah Dominick and their 1-year-old daughter, Aesklyn, near their home in Cody, Wyo. Sweetser recently accepted a position as head coach of Burke Mountain Academy’s nordic program in East Burke, Vt. (Courtesy photo)

    If you are from New England, you’ve probably heard of Will Sweetser. Originally from Auburn, Maine, Sweetser, 47, has been coaching nordic for the last 25 years. He skied for Dartmouth and coached at Bates College, the Jackson Hole Ski Club, Carrabassett Valley Academy, and Rangeley Lakes Ski Club before spending 15 years with Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC) from 2000-2015. He started with MWSC as a cross-country coach and evolved into its competitive programs director, but in 2015, MWSC announced its Olympic Development Team was being restructured. It changed its name to the Outdoor Sports Institute and expanded its mission to four seasons of outdoor sports in Maine.

    With a baby on the way, Sweetser and his wife, Sarah Dominick, a former assistant nordic coach at Bowdoin College, decided to leave their home in Stockholm, Maine, and move west to Cody, Wyo. There, the two started a post-grad, gap-year program called Mountain Endurance Sports, which also offered personalized coaching services and an online ski store. Last season in its second year, the program had two post-grads, Lance McKenney and Daniel Streinz. McKenney placed 20th in the classic sprint at 2017 Junior World Championships in Utah, and according to Sweetser, Streinz ended the season with the best International Ski Federation (FIS) point ranking of any junior man in the U.S.

    In March, the Burke Mountain Academy in East Burke, Vt., announced Sweetser would be returning back to New England to serve as its new head nordic coach. He said he accepted the job in early March and with his wife Sarah and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Aesklyn, the family of three planned to head East in June for the first training camp of the season at Burke.

    FasterSkier caught up with Sweetser on the phone earlier this month from his current home in Cody.

    ***

    FasterSkier: What drew you to Burke and back to New England?

    Will Sweetser: My wife and I spent 20 years in Maine, and I grew up in Maine. I love the East, really, I’m a Mainer through and through, but certainly New England has been my home. My wife and I did something very similar to this 20 years ago, we moved out West after I had been coaching for a while in the East, in order to try to race, and we made it about a similar amount of time, about two years. I guess I would say my wife loves the trees, she misses them, that’s part of it.

    Part of the move out here was to get a break after MWSC and to get a chance to be with family. I mean, I was constantly putting in 60 to 75 hour weeks at MWSC, so it was a good opportunity for me to change things up. I looked at jobs over those two years and had conversations with a number of different options, and Burke has been the best fit for us. Part of the attraction is that it is a very small rural town, it feels like a lot like where we just were in Maine, at the same time, I can drive an hour and 15 minutes and be in Hanover, where I could drive an hour fifteen in northern Maine and still be absolute nowhere.

    It’s a good change for us, but it preserves a lot of the things we really loved about Maine, while offering us an opportunity. … We were looking for a place to raise our daughter, the opportunity to raise her somewhere the strive for excellence is real so that was a big draw. And last, it seems like a great fit for both of us to be able to work there when the time is right with our family. We felt really welcomed there.

     

    FS: How difficult of a decision was that?

    WS: Like I said, I had other job offers; I interviewed at other places the last two years. It was pretty easy for us to decide that those things weren’t right. … It wasn’t a difficult decision, every time you move it’s a big deal, so we wanted to make sure the fit was right. We spent quite a bit of time there looking things over, and we tried to do a good job making that decision with our eyes wide open, so we spent a better part of a week on campus, and I went back and visited again.

     

    FS: When did the hiring process start and how long did it take?

    WS: It was all pretty quick. I started having conversations with Burke in late February, and we went and visited the last couple days of February and first couple days of March and I accepted a position March 3 or 4. We knew that we were looking for something, I talked to groups in Canada, and I interviewed for two other positions while I was out East, but I was recruiting for Burke by the time JN’s [Junior Nationals] started [in March].

     

    FS: What are your key priorities in your first year at Burke and what is the status of its nordic program?

    WS: Priority number one is to recruit. I don’t know if you know the history of Burke, but it’s a longstanding nordic program, for over 30 years they’ve had a nordic program, and they produced some excellent skiers, from people like [U.S. Ski Team members] Liz Stephen and Ida Sargent, [and Ford Sayre’s] Sam Tarling a little after them. Heading into this with them having had no athletes and no coaches last year, essentially the program was dead. In name it was not dead, and they have always had a nordic skier on their school logo, and the board of directors seemed totally disinclined to let nordic die, so I feel like there is a tremendous support for nordic at the school.

    My first priority is rekindling that core group. We do have interest. Two kids are committed to coming and I am in discussions with several others that I think we will start the year between four and six athletes for next year. My goal is to have enough athletes on campus to have a consistent group of somewhere between 18 to 24 athletes. I recognize that is going to take a while, but that will be a program that is several coaches, full-age cohort in both men’s and women’s high school ages. I am very optimistic about the potential. There are a lot of great things that Burke has to offer, such as skiing on campus, which I think is a big plus, so we are looking at homologating a couple of race courses right there. We are going to grow a fairly robust gap-year program, and we will have a pretty extensive camp schedule coming up. I will run one camp this summer and then see where that leads us.

     

    Will Sweetser, former MWSC competitive programs director, holding Welly Ramsey, whom he coached for six years at the MWSC, during a season-ending team ski in April 2015 in Fort Kent, Maine. (Photo: Facebook/Welly Ramsey)

    FS: How is the Burke position different than your position at Maine Winter Sports Center?

    WS: Well, one, it’s vastly less travel. I am going to spend, I don’t even want to guess the number of fewer miles I am going to drive, but a significant amount. The proximity of other strong programs is just outstanding. One of the things that makes New England the strongest region in the nation is that we have such a strong club system, thanks in large part to NENSA [New England Nordic Ski Association], but the proximity to GMVS [Green Mountain Valley School] and Stratton and Craftsbury is just great. I think it is excellent that all those programs are in Vermont, not too far from one another and can bang heads, and for that matter, [NENSA Head Cross-Country Coach] Margaret [Maher’s] program over at Lake Placid, and then the rekindling of the Dublin School if you go a little further out. I think that if you drew a radius around [Vermont’s] upper valley, you really get to some super-strong programs.

    Some of the other things that I think will really help Burke and that I did not have access to at MWSC is I got access to snowmaking both at Burke and at Craftsbury and I think I am going to be able to capitalize on that. And it will be different in that my duties are different. My role at MWSC was in no way shape or form confined to coaching junior racers. Almost the whole time I was there, I had extensive other duties: community building, facilities management. It’s not like those things are going to go away, but it’s all right there, which is really different from driving across the whole state of Maine trying to grow those things. It is much more ‘grow it at home’ and I will have a lot more contact hours with athletes than I have ever been able to have.

     

    FS: Will Mountain Endurance Sports continue and if so in what capacity?

    WS: It will happen in a modified iteration, the latest iteration. We are still working on the ins and outs of where to keep the business. It very well may change name, certainly we will continue to retail and do team sales for Maplus wax and Rex Ski Wax, we are working on details with how our arrangement with KV+ will move forward, and as far as the coaching goes, no, we are not going to do a gap-year program anymore — that’s going to be Burke — but I will continue a coaching relationship with some athletes who are older than high school. I am still talking with several athletes that I have worked with in the past about their athletic future. I am for sure working with Austin Huneck, who was with me for two gap years with MWSC then he was a standout freshman at the University of New Mexico two years ago, spent last year in Sweden not ski racing, but now he is coming back to ski racing. I am working with him as his coach, and somehow, he and a few other guys are going to be part of, I don’t know what to call it yet, maybe like a Burke Mountain training group, something like that.  It’s not a full senior program yet, but give me a few years.

     

    FS: What has kept you coaching and in the sport for the last 25 years?

    WS: It was really at Dartmouth where I developed a passion for skiing and I coached first. I was a writing major. I was writing and coaching, and then I was teaching English and coaching, and then it turned out I could make a better living coaching. But more than that, I lost a brother to drugs in 1998 and since then I have been pretty motivated to help kids make better choices, and I have been doing that through skiing ever since then, so that’s a lot of what has kept me in it. That is my driving passion: working with kids and helping them make good decisions, and that was a big piece of MWSC. And the other piece is that my wife and I have done this for essentially all our adult lives, we really enjoy the lifestyle, the people we get to work with are fantastic. It’s a great way to travel and it’s a great way see other parts of the world. We really enjoy just being outdoors and being fit. Even two years ago, I wasn’t coaching essentially, we were out in the mountains hiking, skiing, doing all the things you do for ski training, just because we love them, so it’s a really easy fit for us, and we look forward to sharing more of those things with people who are passionate about those at Burke. The Burke community is really motivated.

     

    FS: Do you know where you will be living yet when you move in June?

    WS: We don’t know; we would like to know. I am hoping by the time I go to run this camp in June that I will know and I will be able to look at where we will live and then can pack appropriately. We are leaving a lot of our stuff here. Cody is not a ski town, but its a great place to train for skiing. The elevation is excellent, the climate is excellent, the mountain biking is growing in leaps and bounds, so the trail system is fantastic right in town. Cody sits at 5,000 feet and the mountains around it goes up to 12,000 feet. If everything goes as well as we think it’s going to go, I am sure we will have a permanent location at Burke in a few years. For now, I anticipate that we will live near or on campus.

    We are looking forward to being back. It really does feel like our family. The New England ski family feels like our family. Even on the circuit the last two years, we have been astonished by the continued support we get from New England, even when we lived out here, so it really does feel like a homecoming for us.

  • BMA Revives Nordic Program with Olympic-Level Coach

    Will Sweetser was recently hired as head nordic coach of the Burke Mountain Academy in East Burke, Vt.

    (Press release)

    EAST BURKE, Vt. (March 7, 2017) – Burke Mountain Academy is delighted to announce the revival of its Nordic program with the hiring of Will Sweetser as the Head Nordic Coach effective immediately in preparation for the 2017-2018 academic year.

    A Dartmouth College graduate, Sweetser has more than two decades of experience as a Nordic coach, having personally overseen the training of athletes who qualified for the 2006, 2010 and 2014 IOC Winter Olympic and Winter Paralympic Games.

    His coaching career includes working with both the US Ski Team and the US Biathlon Team as part of the ski service team to FIS Scando Cups, OPA Cups, World Cups, IBU World Junior Championships and IBU World Youth Championships, as well as local coaching experiences with Bates College, Jackson Hole Ski Club, Carrabassett Valley Academy, Rangeley Lakes Nordic and the Maine Winter Sports Center.

    “I am truly excited by the opportunity to rebuild Burke Nordic to a position of national prominence,” says Sweetser who also recently founded Mountain Endurance Sports. “In my two decades of coaching, I’ve encountered so many excellent Burke student athletes –including some of my favorite kids from my home state of Maine,” he shares. “Burke is absolutely the right place for my family as I focus on shaping the next generation of outstanding Nordic racers.”

    BMA has a long tradition of developing thriving Nordic athletes. Two current US Ski Team racers, Liz Stephen ‘05 and Ida Sargent ‘06, evolved at the academy.

    “I’m very excited Will is joining our team to bring the necessary leadership and vision to our revived Nordic program,” tells Jory Macomber, BMA’s Head of School and alumnus from the class of 1980. “BMA’s vision has always been to develop the most complete student-athletes and to aim for delivering world class alpine and Nordic racers. With our amazing training sites and USSA designation, we are in a strong position to offer our students the cutting-edge resources they need to reach their full potential during their highly formative adolescent development years.”

    Recently, BMA established a comprehensive partnership with USSA and was recognized as a U.S. Ski Team High Performance Center – in large part thanks to the academy’s superior on snow training venue and new, state-of-art Ronnie Berlack indoor athletic training facility.

  • Setting the Scene: Pre-Competition Day at Lahti World Championships

    Setting the Scene: Pre-Competition Day at Lahti World Championships

    An Austrian athlete tests skis as he glides back into the main stadium. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    LAHTI, Finland — Tuesday at Lahti’s venue for the 2017 Nordic World Ski Championships, the sun sets early. Although technically sunset was 5:22 p.m., the sun on this clear-sky day was still wintertime reluctant. It seemed too short a time for the sun’s transect to thaw Lahti. Temps were in the mid-to-low 20 degrees Fahrenheit. But a brisk wind called for down coats and insulated pants for those not actively skiing — in the shade, it felt like the teens.

    Basked in an early evening glow, Lahti’s three iconic ski jumps dominate the 2017 Nordic World Championships venue. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    For athletes, it was a day of pre-competition ski and wax testing on bulletproof tracks that gradually deteriorated on the steeper climbs. The ski loops have good coverage. The snow remains coarse, as the tracks are covered with predominately manmade snow with trace amounts of natural snow tilled in.

    Lahti’s most dominant feature are its ski jumps, which are among the first objects to catch morning light. The surrounding landscape isn’t marked by serrated mountains, but by subtle hills that make the venue’s three domineering jumps (a K 116, K 90, and K 64), that much more ominous. First nordic-combined skiers then women’s ski jumpers had an opportunity for test flights off the K 90.

    On the non-skiing side of things, the venue was abuzz of last-minute prep: television cables being covered for protection before the onslaught of spectators, event producers testing the stadium’s Skycam, sponsors unpacking schwag, and media arriving to pick up credentials. Like the athletes fine tuning before the competition begins, Lahti’s organizers are near set for the big show.

    On Wednesday, two qualification races will ensue: the women’s 5-kilometer classic and men’s 10 k classic individual starts. These races are for athletes from “non-skiing” nations who have not met the FIS-point benchmark to participate in the championships. Start rights to Lahti’s distance races are granted to the top-10 male and female finishers. (All skiers are granted start rights for Thursday’s freestyle sprint regardless of their results in Wednesday’s qualifier.)

    5 k start list | 10 k start list

    ***

    Cross-Country Competition Schedule: 

    (All cross-country and nordic-combined events will be streamed live in the U.S. on NBCSports.com)

    A Latvian skier double poles through Lahti’s stadium on Tuesday. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    Wednesday, Feb. 22
    -Women’s 5 k classic interval start (7:00 a.m. EST)
    -Men’s 10 k classic interval start (8:30 a.m. EST)

    Thursday, Feb. 23 
    -Women’s freestyle k sprint (10:30 a.m. EST)
    -Men’s freestyle k sprint

    Saturday, Feb. 25 
    -Women’s 15 k skiathlon (5:00 a.m. EST)
    -Men’s 30 k skiathlon (7:30 a.m. EST)

    Sunday, Feb. 26
    -Women’s classic team sprint
    -Men’s classic team sprint

    (Semifinals starting at 4:30 a.m. EST, finals starting at 6:30 a.m. EST)

    Tuesday, Feb. 28 
    -Women’s 10 k classic interval start (6:45 a.m. EST)

    Wednesday, Mar. 1 
    -Men’s 15 k classic interval start (6:45 a.m. EST)

    Thursday, Mar. 2 
    -Women’s 4 x 5 k team relay (8:00 a.m. EST)

    Friday, Mar. 3
    -Men’s 4 x 10 k team relay (6:30 a.m. EST)

    Saturday, Mar. 4 
    -Women’s 30 k freestyle mass start (7:30 a.m. EST)

    Sunday, Mar. 5  
    -Men’s 50 k freestyle mass start (7:30 a.m. EST)

    U.S. 2017 World Championships Team:

    Men

    • Simi Hamilton (Stratton T2/ World Cup A-team)
    • Andy Newell (Stratton T2/ World Cup A-team)
    • Erik Bjornsen (Alaska Pacific University/World Cup B-team)
    • Noah Hoffman (Ski and Snowboard Club Vail/World Cup B-team)
    • Tad Elliott (Ski and Snowboard Club Vail)
    • Kyle Bratrud (Central Cross Country)
    • Ben Lustgarten (Craftsbury Green Racing Project)
    • Cole Morgan (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation)

    Women

    • Jessie Diggins (Stratton T2/World Cup A-team)
    • Sadie Bjornsen (Alaska Pacific University/World Cup A-team)
    • Sophie Caldwell (Stratton T2/World Cup A-team)
    • Kikkan Randall (Alaska Pacific University/World Cup A-team)
    • Ida Sargent (Craftsbury Nordic/World Cup A-team)
    • Liz Stephen (Burke Mountain Academy/World Cup A-team)
    • Rosie Brennan (Alaska Pacific University/World Cup B-team)
    • Caitlin Gregg (Loppet Nordic Racing)
    • Chelsea Holmes (Alaska Pacific University)

    Canadian 2017 World Championships Team:

    Men

    • Alex Harvey (CNEPH/World Cup A-team)
    • Devon Kershaw (World Cup A-team)
    • Len Valjas (World Cup A-team)
    • Jess Cockney (World Cup B-team)
    • Graeme Killick (World Cup B-team)
    • Knute Johnsgaard (AWCA/NST U25 Team)

    Women

    • Emily Nishikawa (NST U25 Team)
    • Dahria Beatty (AWCA/NST U25 Team)
    • Cendrine Browne (CNEPH/NST U25 Team)
    • Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay/NST U25 Team)

    Nordic Combined Competition Schedule:

    (All cross-country and nordic-combined events will be streamed live in the U.S. on NBCSports.com)

    Friday, Feb. 24

    -Individual HS 100 competition round (8:30 a.m. EST)

    -Individual 10 k cross-country race (6:30 a.m. EST)

    Sunday, Feb. 26

    -Team event  HS 100 competition round (5:00 a.m. EST)

    -Team event  4 x 5 k cross-country race (8:30 a.m. EST)

    Wednesday, Mar. 1

    -Individual HS 130 competition round (5:00 a.m. EST)

    -Individual 10 k cross-country race (9:15 a.m. EST)

    Friday, Mar. 3

    -Team sprint HS 130 competition round (9:00 a.m. EST)

    -Team sprint 2 x 7.5 k cross-country race (11:15 a.m. EST)

    U.S. Nordic Combined 2017 World Championships Team:

    • Bryan Fletcher
    • Taylor Fletcher
    • Benjamin Berend
    • Adam Loomis
    • Ben Loomis
  • Nordic Nation Podcast: Rebounding with Liz Stephen

    Nordic Nation Podcast: Rebounding with Liz Stephen

    'Nordic Nation' Fasterskier PodcastLiz Stephen has earned her stripes. For the last 11 years, the 29-year-old Vermont native has been part of the US Ski Team (USST). After veterans like Kikkan Randall, Stephen has become an anchor on the women’s team, which now carries with it expectations of top-20’s, top-10’s and podiums. At the age of 15, the Burke Mountain Academy alpine skier and runner switched to the skinny skis for good.

    With her high energy and drive, she became a force on the U.S. junior cross-country ski scene. What followed were a string of results commensurate with her high turnover. In both 2013 and 2014, she was the 15th-ranked distance skier on the World Cup. A year later, that ranking was more than halved — she concluded 2015 ranked seventh in the Distance World Cup.

    Liz Stephen (U.S. Ski Team) leads Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) and the rest of the chase pack, including Kaitlynn Miller (r), during the women's 30 k classic mass start at U.S. Distance Nationals on Saturday in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
    Liz Stephen (U.S. Ski Team) leads Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) and the rest of the chase pack during the women’s 30 k classic mass start at 2016 U.S. Distance Nationals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    Then, due to possible overtraining and some shaken confidence, Stephen’s results regressed to 28th on the distance list in 2016. Still good enough for an U.S. A-team nomination, but not what she expected.

    “It’s not as though you worked any less hard, generally that’s not the case, sometimes it’s the opposite,” Stephen said during the podcast interview. “You feel like you worked really hard and none of it is paying off. It’s like a two-sided sword. Your results are going down. And instead of being, ‘All right, I can do this,’ gaining confidence, it’s the opposite. Every time you are getting a result you’re not proud of, your confidence is sinking a little bit lower. And for every percent your confidence sinks, that’s at least a place on the World Cup, if not two.”

    In a world-championship year, Stephen is hoping to rebound individually and in support of her teammates on a medal-winning relay team. All that doesn’t seem so far fetched. Stephen skied the third leg in last season’s 4 x 5 k in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, in which the U.S. women skied to their historic-best second place in a World Cup relay.

    The U.S. women placed a historic second for their best-ever relay finish on Sunday at the World Cup 4 x 5 k in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. From left to right: Jessie Diggins, Sophie Caldwell, Sadie Bjornsen, and Liz Stephen. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
    The U.S. women placed a historic second for their best-ever relay finish at the 2016 World Cup 4 x 5 k in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. From left to right: Jessie Diggins, Sophie Caldwell, Sadie Bjornsen, and Liz Stephen. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

    Time for more high-turnover Stephen — click the play arrow below to listen to the podcast. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

    Have a podcast idea? Please email nordicnation@fasterskier.com.

  • Johnson Takes Over as Head Coach at MSU after Trygstad-Saari Resigns

    Johnson Takes Over as Head Coach at MSU after Trygstad-Saari Resigns

    Matthew Perry Johnson was hired as the new head coach for the Montana State University Ski Team. He will begin his position in August. (Photo: Montana State University)
    Matthew Perry Johnson was hired as the new head coach for the Montana State University Ski Team. He will begin his position in August. (Photo: Evan Hagen)

    It has been a tumultuous two years for the coaching staff of the Montana State University cross country ski team. The past two springs have seen complete shifts in staffing — long-time head coach Grethe-Lise Hagensen’s contract was not renewed in 2014 and her replacement, Kristina Trygstad-Saari, resigned from her position at the team’s helm earlier this year. The Bozeman, Mont. university recently announced that former Middlebury College racer and Alaska Winter Stars coach Matthew Perry Johnson will be the newest head coach for the Bobcats starting in August.

    In Trygstad-Saari’s first year as a coach the MSU Ski Team finished seventh at the 2015 NCAA Championships in Lake Placid, and the nordic team garnered two All-Ammerican honors. Despite the success, Trygstad-Saari decided to leave the position to explore paths unrelated to skiing. The 30-year-old has been in the ski community as a racer and coach since a her days as a junior with the Bridger Ski Foundation, and explained that she needed a change. “I’ve spent a lot of years moving around in the ski world, both racing and coaching, and I haven’t always been 100 percent sure that it’s where I should be,” Trygstad-Saari wrote in an email, adding that the decision to leave was incredibly difficult.

    Trygstad-Saari said her experience with the MSU team was highly positive, and that a highlight of the season was in Lake Placid where skiers Cambria McDermott and Forrest Mahlen notched fourth and fifth place finishes, respectively. The lone year as head coach didn’t come without challenges, however, as Trygstad-Saari worked to balance athlete’s training and travel, in addition to the coaching transition.

    Cambria McDermott, fourth place and top American finisher in the 2015 NCAA Championship 5 k, high fives Montana State University Head Coach Kristina Trygstad-Saari.
    Cambria McDermott, fourth place and top American finisher in the 2015 NCAA Championship 5 k, high fives Montana State University Head Coach Kristina Trygstad-Saari.

    “The year was challenging, and I had a lot to balance and learn,” she wrote. “Some of our athletes got pretty tired later in the season, and I think I could have done some things differently with training and travel planning. However, I was generally satisfied and think the team responded well to the changes.”

    With her departure from the team, the single-season coach is ready for what the future holds. Trygstad-Saari is currently in Vermont finishing up her master’s degree at the Middlebury College Breadloaf School of English. “Hopefully I can explore some options that will put [the degree] to use!,” she wrote. “As of now, the future is wide open, and I look forward to some new adventures.”

    A large pool of candidates applied to replace Trygstad-Saari, but in the end it was Johnson who got the job. The new head coach grew up skiing with Alaska Winter Stars in Anchorage and raced for Middlebury College in the years following. After graduating he began assistant coaching at Burke Mountain Academy. He left three years later to become the program/director and head coach of the Utah Nordic Alliance, and in 2014 he returned to his roots and coached with Alaska Winter Stars.

    MSU Athletic Director Peter Fields said in a press release that he was pleased with Johnson’s hire. “Matt possesses a strong background in program and student-athlete development,” Fields said. “He has also worked on both coasts as well as the Rocky Mountain region, and is well respected. Matt sees the big picture and is very motivated to continue the level of excellence the Bobcat ski program has established.”

    Johnson applied for the open position at MSU because of the potential he saw in the program. While it was difficult for the Alaska native to leave his current athletes, he said the high-level juniors he has coached over the years inspired him to make the progression to collegiate coaching.

    “Bozeman is such a great environment for ski training year round and the potential I see in the MSU Nordic Program is massive, so in that sense applying for this position specifically was an obvious choice,” Johnson wrote in an email. “The more difficult aspect of the decision was deciding whether to move on from coaching juniors, which I’ve made the focus of my career so far… The way those kids motivate me to work as hard as I can for them definitely pushed me towards pursuing the position with MSU to work with an entire team at that level.”

    In the coming year, Johnson hopes inspire the team and its individuals to greater success. As for the future, however, he has big hopes for his team including an NCAA title. “I would like to help establish this team as a place where athletes who are serious about their skiing as well as academics know they will have every opportunity to improve and grow,” Johnson wrote. “I think this team can win NCAA titles and produce athletes who are ready for World Cup competition after graduation.”

    To get there, Johnson will have to overcome the challenges associated with being a new coach on a well-established team, especially given the fact he will be the third head coach in two years for many of the older athletes. “Any time there is coaching turnover there are challenges to overcome,” he wrote. “It’s a situation I’ve dealt with from an athlete’s and coach’s perspective so I know that as long as everyone feels comfortable communicating openly, there’s nothing we can’t overcome with relative ease.”

    Although Trygstad-Saari is leaving, she is excited to see what Johnson will do with her former team. “He’s had a wide-range of coaching experience and has the passion and motivation to help drive the program,” she wrote. “He also has the skills to excel in the position beyond the ski trails; he will be a tremendous asset to the Bozeman nordic community. I think the team is in a great place, but I’m confident that Matt will bring even more to MSU and continue this trajectory.”

    Johnson will start at MSU in August and said that he has yet to come to a final decision regarding an assistant coach.

  • Burke Mountain Academy’s Open Training Sessions and Winter Camp

    burke mountain academy nordic midweek training

    Join us for these free training sessions, all winter long!

    Head Coach Kate Barton and BMA Nordic will host free training sessions for any local athlete who is interested in getting in an extra cardio session during the winter, learning some Nordic technique, or experiencing BMA Nordic training firsthand. These sessions will include the Alpine Junior Weekday program athletes. Everyone is welcome!

    When: Wednesdays, 3:30 to 4:30/5 p.m. 

    Where: BMA Soccer Field 

    Who: Middle/High School Athletes 

    What: Nordic Skiing, for all Ability Levels 

    Please contact Kate Barton: kbarton@burkemtnacademy.org for more information 

    burke winter training camp

    Come live the life of a full-time Burke student!

    Attending athletes will sleep in the dorms, eat in the dining hall and train on the BMA Nordic trails. Athletes will work with BMA Head Coach Kate Barton and current BMA Nordic team members. Training will include on snow sessions, indoor gym training, video sessions and classroom instruction on training methods and practices. Not to mention a whole lot of fun, games and competition! 

    When: January 3, 4, and 5

    Where: Burke Mountain Academy

    Who: Nordic racers 12-15 years

    What: Training Camp

  • Another Scandinavian Trip in the Books: A Burke Tale

    Another Scandinavian Trip in the Books: A Burke Tale

    Warren Taylor (l) and Charlie Greenberg skiing at Sognefjell glacier in Norway during Burke Mountain Academy's recent annual Scandinavian training camp. (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Warren Taylor (l) and Charlie Greenberg skiing at Sognefjell glacier in Norway during Burke Mountain Academy’s recent Scandinavian trip from June 11-July 1. (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)

    By Warren Taylor | Burke Mountain Academy

    Editor’s Note: The following is a firsthand account from 17-year-old Warren Taylor, an incoming senior at Burke Mountain Academy in East Burke, Vt., who recently returned from his third trip to the academy’s annual Scandinavian nordic-training camp.

    I first went to Sweden and Norway two years ago with Pete Phillips, Matt Johnson and a big group of skiers, and the next year with Kate Barton and Simi Hamilton. This year, with Kate, my coach at Burke, we were there for just under three weeks, arriving on June 11th and flying out July 1st. I have done camps with Burke for around four years now, but this past year was my first as a student there.

    ***

    Burke nordic skiers running down to the start of the Hallsta Test in Sweden. (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Burke skiers running down to the start of the Hallsta Test in Sweden during its annual Scandinavian training camp.

     

    I’m not much of a city boy, but I did my best to guide us out of Stockholm. The multitude of unmarked one-way streets almost sealed our defeat. After finding the E4 highway, we headed north to Sollefteå. Tim Regan, Koby Gordon, Charlie Greenberg, Kate Barton, and I had all made it to Sweden.

    Arriving in Sollefteå, we were a little disappointed that the go-kart track so heavily advertised looked like it had been abandoned years before. We instead took an early night before starting a five-day camp with the Sollefteå Skidgymnasium. This training camp took place at a five-star hotel right next to a seven-kilometer rollerski track overlooking the town. Next to the hotel was a pair of old wooden ski jumps built far off the ground and swaying in the wind above the trees.

    We started the camp with short running intervals and a strength session where Robin Bryntesson, a former Swedish national team skier, impressed us all with his uncanny ability to walk around on his hands and balance on just one. After a few days of rollerskiing, an orienteering race and a brutal race down the river in the least hydrodynamic boat imaginable (pretty much a square dock), we did the famed Hallsta Test.

    The two-kilometer uphill-running test went from the town straight up and past the hotel, almost to the very top of the mountain. We were told the record was 7:50, and even Swedish World Champion Johan Olsson was never able to break it. This was one of the tougher tests I’ve done, but I felt surprisingly good, getting a time of 10:09, just beat out by the younger coaches and a Swede named Jacob who was also my roommate during the camp.

    Us, Emil, Liz, Anna, and coaches - Bengt, Tony, Robin, and Per-Ola
    Us with Emil, Liz, Anna, and coaches Bengt, Tony, Robin, and Per-Ola.

    Later in the week we saw U.S. national team skier Liz Stephen, who came up with Sweden’s Anna Haag and Emil Jönsson to do a 30 k skate time trial on the rollerski track. When we had a chance to talk with them, Emil jokingly told us that he had been putting in around 200 hours of training per month, but he had just gotten his ticket to Sochi, so now he wouldn’t have to train at all.

    After a three-hour run through marshes, a few technique sessions with the Swedish coaches, and a nice afternoon in town playing some volleyball and basketball, the camp ended. We headed right to a town in northern Sweden called Östersund for a night of camping and a short roller ski before we went up to Bruksvallarna, a small town in northwestern Sweden that borders Norway.

    Burke Mountain Academy skiers during a 4 1/2-hour run near Bruksvallarna, Sweden. (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Burke Mountain Academy skiers during a 4 1/2-hour run near Bruksvallarna, Sweden.

    We tried to find something to do on Midsummer, a national holiday for the longest day of the year at Östersund, but the guy at a tourist center directed us to a church up in the hills where he said there would be festivities. Unfortunately, the only thing going on was a Swedish sermon that felt quite uncomfortable to us as foreigners who didn’t speak the language. We had all heard about some crazy parties during this holiday, but the town was empty and we went to bed wondering where on earth the Swedish population had gone.

    Bruksvallarna was a ghost town as well, and we searched in vain for its “downtown.” We eventually found that there was no downtown, just a little grocery store across from our cabin that did not open at all the first day, forcing us to drive half an hour to the next town over.

    The next day we went out for an epic 4 1/2-hour run in the mountains up the road from our little cabin. We waded through knee-deep marshes and climbed through brambles and bushes out to a lake that we saw in the horizon from the first peak we climbed.

    On the way back, we stopped by a small red building that we picked out in the distance. A little goat path ran along the patches of snow to this house, and we could see people hiking along it. It turned out to be a fully functional and a surprisingly nice waffle house at the top of a mountain.

    Little cabin by the lake we ran to (with antlers we found along the way). (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Little cabin by the lake we ran to (with antlers we found along the way).

    I can honestly say I’ve never had a tastier waffle, probably because I ate it after four hours of running and hiking.

    Unfortunately, we were only in Bruksvallarna for a day and a half, but we were all excited to drive west to the snow in Norway at Sognefjell. Although it poured during our first ski, I stopped noticing it after a while, just glad to be back on snow. However, afterwards I did notice how unbelievably wet all my clothes were.

    We spent two nights camping near the longest fjord in Norway with a glacial waterfall running next to the campground. We then moved to a hotel I would argue is one of the best hotels on the planet. An all you can eat buffet, skiing all day, a drying room for all our clothes, and famous skiers at every corner. What more do you need?

    Our drive down to the fjord. (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Our drive down to the fjord

    We had three glory days at the glacier before heading back to the U.S. All we did was pile hours, sleep, and eat too much brown cheese. We encountered plenty of sun, making all but one of the skis radiant and rainless. Although the trails were deteriorating quickly as the snow melted, workers did a fantastic job of rerouting the trails so we were able to keep skiing on a 7 k loop.

    After those three days, we began our odyssey back to the U.S. Following a seven-hour drive to Oslo, we camped on a soccer field by the highway. One more six-hour drive to Stockholm and we were halfway home.

    We walked around the city for an afternoon and saw a sweet Red Bull competition. People were trying desperately to fly cardboard planes as far as they could off a ramp into the water flowing through Stockholm. Unfortunately, we did have some trouble finding our way back to the van.

    I’ll miss the sunny days by the fjord, the scenic mountain runs in Bruksvallarna, the people I met, and, of course, the brown cheese at Sognefjell.

    All the training and technique gains made during this trip will push me forward as I continue to ski. Hopefully I’ll be back next year to experience it all again.

    Sognefjell Glacier Skiing! (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Sognefjell Glacier Skiing!
    Sunny kayak in the fjord (All photos courtesy of Kate Barton and Koby Gordon)
    Sunny kayak in the fjord
  • After Career-Best Season, Stephen Aims To Keep Moving Up

    After Career-Best Season, Stephen Aims To Keep Moving Up

    Liz Stephen, left, leading teammate Kikkan Randall during an interval workout on Eagle Glacier this month. Photo: Matt Whitcomb/USST.

    As skiers go, there aren’t many out there more inexhaustibly enthusiastic than Liz Stephen. Her energetic description of the technique changes she’s currerntly working on, for example, could inspire you to momentarily want nothing more than to strap on your rollerskis and hit the pavement.

    The U.S. Ski Team A-team member certainly has plenty to be happy about: Stephen posted top-20s twice during the regular season, a first for the 25-year-old. As the 28th-ranked female distance skier on the World Cup heading into next winter, she remains in the all-expenses-paid Red Group after first cracking the threshold this January. On one of the most grueling courses she skied all year, the Tour de Ski’s final climb up the Alpe Cermis, she had the eighth-fastest time of the field.

    A season filled with personal bests doesn’t mean Stephen is resting on her laurels, though. Her training partners in Park City frequently consist of her male teammates on the USST; to keep up with them on over-distance workouts she simply switches to faster rollerskis. She’s continually refining her technique and watching other skiers to make herself better.

    Stephen’s summer and fall schedule will actually have her training away from home more often than not. She recently returned from the second annual North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp in Alaska and is getting ready to fly to Scandinavia for five weeks this Sunday. There she’ll compete at the Blink Festival in Norway before going to Torsby, Sweden, for a joint USST camp with the Swedish women that she helped lay the foundation for with Kikkan Randall last summer.

    In the middle of such a whirlwind off-season, it was time to check in with Stephen before she took off for her next trip. The following interview has been edited and condensed.

    A bluebird day on Eagle Glacier. Photo: Matt Whitcomb/USST.

    FasterSkier: You just got back from Eagle Glacier. How was the camp?

    Liz Stephen: It was awesome! It was one of the best camps we did last year and I think it went even better than last year. It was really great to have Aikku (Finland’s Aino Kaisa Saarinen) there. She was outstanding in terms of having a skier from that level want to train with us, and she was also one of the nicer people we possibly could have invited. It definitely upped the level of the camp.

    The glacier was great; it was beautiful up there. We had one really nice day and the rest was pretty much in the fog. It didn’t matter, though.

    FS: What were the specific goals of being up there?

    LS: Just being on snow; getting in lots of hours and working on the same technique stuff we’ve been trying on the rollers. It doesn’t always transfer the way you’d like it to once you get on snow, but this year particularly in classic [the technique] is transferring better than it has in the past. I think there are improvements being made in my classic skiing.

    FS: What kind of adjustments are you making?

    LS: Kind of skiing bigger, more powerfully. My goal was to follow people like Aikku around. She has a unique ski style but very relaxed as well. I’m a different skier than she is and don’t want to do that all the time, but in a lot of areas it’s good to practice skiing different terrains and behind different people.

    A big part of it was learning how to take off the right part of my foot instead of always being back and bent over. I’m not very powerful when I get tired, and that’s been a big goal: standing upright when you get tired.

    Kikkan Randall, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen and Liz Stephen taking a break from training. Photo: Matt Whitcomb/USST.

    FS: Overall have you made any big changes to your training this summer?

    LS: Not really. You always make little tweaks with things you want to do better. But as a theme, overall it’s the same stuff — it seems like what we did last year worked. I’m living in the same place, training similar hours.

    I’m maybe doing a few less than last year because I want to do more speed and interval work — particularly speed work so I can maybe have a few better finishes, maybe qualify in a sprint. I’ve made a few strength changes. I’m spending more time working on upper body strength. I did a lot of double-pole work last year but I’m continuing the DP work to keep that really strong.

    FS: When you’re not at a camp, who are you training with in Park City?

    LS: Andy Newell came to Park City after Bend and we trained almost every session together. Sometimes I couldn’t keep up, but he’d come back every half hour or so to say hey. Even if I can’t keep up with them it’s fun to have somebody out there doing the same thing as you. It’s really nice to train with Andy; he always spends time helping me with technique or talking about a question I have for him. He works hard but keeps it super fun.

    From living with Tad [Elliott] and Simi [Hamilton] I get to train with them all the time, and Noah [Hoffman] is in town now, too. I have rollerskis with different speeds, and if I want to go with Noah one day I go on the faster skis. It’s good to have training partners, and I need to work on skiing at high speeds as well.

    FS: You’re still affiliated with Burke Mountain Academy, but have you ever thought about joining a senior club?

    LS: I train with Burke when I’m home, which is rare. It’s certainly crossed my mind that I should maybe have a club team like Stratton, and have a club for more of the year, but I really want to keep my affiliation with Burke. After going there for so long I couldn’t join a different club. They gave me a lot as an athlete and I want to give back to them as much as possible. I trust Pete [Phillips] and Kate [Barton] a lot, even though spring Nationals are the only US races I do these days.

    I’ll probably live in Park City until the end of my career because I love it here. The U.S. Ski Team gives me a ton of support — as much as I need.

    FS: You’re headed to Europe soon, are you getting excited about that?

    LS: Yeah, Kikkan and I are headed over to the Blink Festival, and I’ll be gone about a month in Norway and Sweden.

    [The Blink Festival] starts on Thursday with a hill climb that sounds super cool. You take a boat down to this fjord to get to the start area, and then it’s a 1 k flat and 6 k uphill. It should be really fun. Then there’s a 10 k crit-style race where if you get lapped you get pulled. And there’s a sprint on Saturday.

    I’ve never done a rollerski race before; it’ll be good training for being fast on skis and learning how to rollerski that fast next to people. I think it’ll be an eye-opener. A lot of Norwegians will be there, and some Italian and Swiss skiers. It’ll be fun to see people in the summer again and just learn how to move fast on the rollers; it’s not something I do that often.

    FS: And then you’ll have a team camp in Sweden?

    LS: We’ll go to Trondheim, Norway, for a week to train with one of Kikkan’s old coaches, and then we’ll spend a week with Anna Haag in Orsa, Sweden, again before meeting the rest of our team and the Swedish team for a 10-day camp in Torsby.

    I’m dreaming of the week I get to spend in Orsa again. I love Anna and her family, and the training there last summer was — running through bogs is like the best thing in the world to me.

    And it’ll be really cool to have both teams training together; that will be really fun to train with more people, different people, learning new things.

    FS: What are your goals for next season?

    LS: I guess the main goal for me is to stay healthy and make sure it’s still enjoyable. It was good for me last year; I love being on the road, I love my team, and I stayed healthy. And the results were good.

    In terms of results for next year, my goal is to get a top 10 at World Championships, maybe a few top-20s as well. I’d also like to race the Tour de Ski again, but World Champs are the main goal. I want to be in the Red Group all season if possible, and just keep steeping the level up this year. A top-10 on the World Cup would be really good.

    The ultimate awesome thing for me in my career would be to win a relay medal with the girls. You and your teammates on a podium together sums up why I do sport. We’ve talked about relay goals and we want to podium at the Olympics. And the next step along the way this year is to shoot for a podium [at World Championships]. We’ll see what happens. Everyone’s got to be healthy, but I think it’s possible.

    Stephen, second from left, celebrating the U.S. women’s fifth-place relay finish in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, last winter. Photo: Andy Newell.
  • The New Season: Hours and Juniors

    The New Season: Hours and Juniors

    For many Nordic skiers, April marks the end of the season and May starts the new one. With some variation, the Nordic year is made up of 13 four-week-long periods. Each period has a different training emphasis and within each, training rhythms weave through the choices of intensities, training methods and forms, and time spent. April to May and May to June are a transition period; a time for relaxation, the return to dry land training and the setting of new and adjusted goals.

    There are some assumptions about setting goals for the new season that are popping up on various websites that, particularly when we are concerned with juniors, warrant a careful look. A common topic is the proper number of training hours and the amount to increase them. My old Scotch aunt was fond of saying about things like fire, booze, passion, and stubbornness that “It makes a good slave but a bad master!” I think hours are much the same.

    For juniors, getting started in the game, experiencing longer races, dealing with more significant successes and shortfalls, and beginning to lay out plans for entry into senior competition are all different stages. In designing programs for kids, it is critical to keep that in mind.

    The Hours Beast

    This is a big topic and I am not going to weigh in on it where it concerns seniors. There are a lot of informed opinions. This is about juniors; teenage athletes coming to skiing from a lot of different points. It is about giving kids the best foundation for getting better, it is about not unwittingly burning them out, it is about creating a curiosity about training and an appreciation for patience.

    One of the pitfalls in the hours game is the total number necessary and another is the rate of increase from season to season. With juniors we need to determine when (and if) we should start counting, how we count and what we do with the numbers.

    When and If

    If a young athlete is fully committed to “doing it all!” in high school, we probably shouldn’t even begin to count hours with regard to ski training. If he or she runs cross-country, plays soccer, skis and then does spring track, each as a competition season, there frankly isn’t time to do effective training for Nordic skiing (or for any of the other sports) and we are opening the athlete to potential hazard if we try to cram it in.

    It is different if the athlete has chosen Nordic skiing as his primary sport. If he is able to run XC and compete but train with a broader, ski related focus, if he can take time to recover at season’s end and then train for skiing without racing too much, and if he can join the track squad for the hurdles or the field events instead of being cajoled into taking his ski-gained fitness into the distance races, then we can think about hours. The athlete has not specialized, he has prioritized.

    When should we start to count hours? A lot depends on when the athlete’s body is ready. There is no average teen, but if there were we might start on a program that prescribed and counted training hours at age 15 or 16. Remember this is when we would start to actually keep track. Enthusiastic kids may keep logs long before and that is fine, though we should be ready to help them keep hour counting from becoming an obsession.

    How many hours should we do? The following comparison of recommendations for yearly hours is meant only to inform:

    The Swedish Ski Federation         The US Ski Team and National Nordic Foundation

    (Den Rode Traaden -2005)             (NNF website and USST Pipeline-current)

    Age   Hours                                      Age   Hours

    16 – 300-400                                     16-17  500+

    17 – 400-450                                     18-19  600+

    18 – 450-525                                     20+     700+

    19 – 525-575

    20 – 575-625

    23 – 675-700

    27 – 775-800

    At Burke, we chose to follow the Scandinavian model more closely. We believe it allows for building a better base, reducing burn out, and a more reasonably attained reality. It encourages the commitment to the quality of the hours over simply the number. If the young athlete is already a skier and is eager, start to keep track of a program of 300–325 hours per year. Do the math. It isn’t too many. The point is to help them keep track and to learn early on how to get the most out of each hour. See how it goes and adjust up or down.

    How do we count hours? One thing is to remember to look at everything the athlete is doing. If he is playing soccer and doing field sprints in training, then those times count toward the yearly total. If he is a good player and the team is good, then a soccer game is not ninety minutes of training. Good players kick, watch, walk, sprint and kick. There is not a lot of aerobic work in a game, but there is probably ten to fifteen minutes of impulse max speed. We don’t want to get in the habit of padding hours. Take hours when they are real, and don’t take them when they are not.

    At Burke, we do not add strength sessions into the yearly total, but keep that as a separate number. The important thing is to be sure the minutes you count are actually minutes you are working. An athlete focused on getting into the gym and running through a max strength session of four to six different exercises can get it done with proper rest intervals in 30 to 40 minutes. The gym becomes more of a social place for some and that is when real hours get muddied in the strength phase. Knowing how to get it done and get on with it is a good thing, but so is enjoying the company of other kids working. In the early stages finding the balance is important.

    What do we do with the hours numbers and how do we decide how much to increase them? These are important considerations. The stage our athlete is in is critical to what move is next.

    Let’s look at three examples. For each the time of the year is now, late April and May, and the project we are confronting is the plan for the coming season with May being the beginning of period one.

    First, a 15-year-old boy who has skied a little as a BKL skier, shows promise and wants to train for skiing. He also runs XC for his high school in the fall and skis on the high school team, racing five km twice a week for much of the season. Spring finds him running the 800 and the mile. His log for skiing has taken into account XC running training, race time, training time for the high school ski team and for the track team. He has logged about 310 hours.

    Second, a 17-year-old female who has skied with a good program and worked on a ski focused plan for two years. She qualified for her region’s JN team and finished in the top 15 in all of those races. Her best race was in the sprint, qualifying and missing semis by one place. Hours for the past season about 380.

    Third, a 19-year-old male. Top Lacrosse player in high school. Quick rise to regional success in skiing. Finishing a PG year with an excellent year round program. Good results in training and early season competitions then falling off dramatically at JN’s and late season efforts. Discouraged and listless by the end.  Hours for the year at 500+.

    Rather than offering detailed recipes, we’ll examine what we see and what we need to consider. Even if we have been the athlete’s coaches in each case, we need to gather information and put it through the grid.

    This is only meant to share ideas or thoughts, not to tell anyone what to do. There are many roads to Rome.

    In the first example, we need to explore what the athlete wants and we need to give those discussions time to process and sink in. He is at a crossroad and if he wants to pick skiing as his primary sport he will need to find a way to put in more time training; not necessarily more hours, but more of his hours need to be focused on base building for skiing. In the fall, I’d be inclined to see if he could add a ski specific workout in a low intensity to his XC running training, in winter to cut back on the number of competitions and perhaps add a longer one or two, and in spring to shift from track distances to field events. On this path we would start a formal log and hours might go up a little; 325? 350?

    If he wants to continue to “letter in four sports” he needs to be careful to stay healthy and because so much of his time is in competition, to pay extra attention to rest and recovery. He is only 15 and he can take another year to “do it all.” The short speed work and general coordination he’ll gain won’t hurt if he stays healthy and doesn’t get driven under by too much competition.  On this course I would leave the hours where they are. In each case we want to emphasize the quality and efficiency of the training times.

    In the instance of our girl coming home enthused and charged from a great JN’s and a good year we take the same time to discuss and to plan the course. Some things to remember are that she is not close to full physical maturity, she has been on a year round training program for only two years, and Mom and Dad are starting to talk in the alphabet soup of NTG, REG, NNF and use words such as “elite,” “pipeline,” and “coach’s pull”.

    Talent is no doubt at work here, as are enthusiasm, natural fitness, and commitment. All are good and effective tools. We need to make sure we are paying attention to the base. This means a look closely at the kind of hours we are putting in before we consider the number. Her distance work is distinctly weaker than her sprints and short races. Do we emphasize sprinting? Or do we take some time to build more speed in levels one, two, and three intensity zones?

    She has a tendency to shorten up and peck at the snow in V2. Do we work only on that or do we also see that it is partly because of poor balance and take some training time in the gym on the beam, and in elementary balance drills? She is happy and healthy and eats normally. Skiing is her chosen sport and her school is fine with that. She has two years of training under the belt. We could move the hours up a little bit and pay close attention to how well they were being used and how careful she was being about recovery from hard sessions. If everything was going smoothly, August might see an upward adjustment, with a ceiling of 415. The next year if all went well, we might be ready for a more traditional 20% jump. With juniors it is important to let the profit from harder work / recovery cycles build up in the bank. Good communication and careful observation are key tools to doing that.

    The third case will take more work. There is morale to deal with and that is not a small thing. Our boy has gone flat and the mood is not good. Outside help might be indicated there. Getting a clear picture of the athlete’s background is perhaps something none of us did in the beginning; not the athlete, not the coaches. It is nobody’s fault. It happens because we as a sport in this country are still figuring this out. Good performance as a junior can still blind us to some important facts.

    We’ll make the background simple. In reality it often is. For the purpose of this example our athlete has been a star athlete at a small school in an area where everyone is active. Sport and outdoor life is a constant companion. He is a good lacrosse player and took to Nordic skiing in the winter to increase aerobic fitness. He excelled in his region, went to JN’s, did well and decided to put some real time into skiing. He signed on with one of the country’s best year round programs. After a great start in training and early season time trials things started to head south. What is up? Where are things going astray?

    Following here is a check list we can use in helping ourselves as coaches to help an athlete having difficulties. It comes from the book Endurance – Training that Produces Results, published in Norway by Akilles Forlag and authored by numerous coaches and sport scientists. One of the things it tacitly recognizes is that the load on the athlete is the whole load of his life situation and not just the training hours.

    “This illuminates some areas/problems that can have an influence on an athlete’s negative performance trend.

    1. Is the athlete incorrectly trained?
      1. Has the training load been too heavy or too light?
      2. Have the correct capacities and abilities stayed in focus?
      3. Has recovery been adequate?
    2. Is the athlete’s general health OK?
      1. How does a blood screen look (iron, hematocrit, vitamins, etc)?
    3. Has the coach followed up with the athlete regularly?
    4. How is the relationship between athlete and coach?
    5. How is the mood in the training group?
    6. Has goal setting been realistic?
    7. Can the declining results be influenced by social or economic factors in the athlete’s life?
      1. Is the athlete plagued by financial difficulties?
      2. Have there been changes in the family situation? Room mates, boy/girl friends?
      3. Have work or school demands changed?
      4. Can outside perceptions and talk be working against performance?” *

    (*The original refers to media attention here but I have modified the translation to cover a broader area.)

    If we work through this, these are some things we might possibly find and armed with the knowledge of which we might be able to help our guy get back on track.

    He is 19 and this has been the first year away from home, living with peers, and cooking, cleaning and in general caring for himself. 

    Nutrition probably isn’t what it should be. Nor is sleep. C2 H5 OH, THC etc. may be factors.

    This is his first formal year round training plan, and the first one that is followed day in and day out. It is likely an increase in training time of 100 hours.

    We find that he does not treat recovery as a specific part of the plan but more leaves it  to happen. A lot of it happens in front of the TV.

    We could go on here, but the first thing that shouts out to me is that more hours for the coming year are not in the picture. In fact fewer, but more carefully tracked would be my knee jerk to this. This could be an athlete who has become over trained, he might have an illness or nutritional issue, or it could be he simply jumped into too much too fast. Trying to be careful I would treat it as overtraining or illness first and order the blood work.

    In my mind, if he wants to have another crack at the game, and is not completely run over by it, he needs to lay out a plan that emphasizes fewer things that break down his capacities and more that stress the effects of recovery and compensation. He might stay at 500 hours and revamp the distribution of them, or he might profit more from fewer hours and careful monitoring of how overload days are used. Free from morals and rights and wrongs, he should make an honest evaluation of the role of alcohol and other recreational drugs in his year. There should be every chance of a happy return to strong competition, but this one would take care, commitment and communication from all parties.

    As we enter the new season we need to review where each of our athletes is. We need to go through the season in our minds and take the time to remember the individual rhythm and cycles of illness, strong performance and technical development. We need to see how well the training time was used and if an increase is in the cards or merely a redirection of emphases. The message for those of us working with juniors is to remember that we are on a path that in reality is not as linear as it looks on all the charts. We need to look at individuals and not only at predetermined grids. We need to be the masters of our hours and not slaves to them.

  • Burke Brings US Athletes to Junior Norwegian Championships

    Burke Brings US Athletes to Junior Norwegian Championships

    The invitation to Burke to participate in the “Jr.NM” or Junior Norwegian Championship was the idea of Bjorn Ilsemann, an energetic coach with the Norwegian College of Elite Sport (NTG). Bjorn’s school and Burke Mountain Academy have just finished round one of an exchange program that we hope to have as an annual affair. The Jr. NM participation grew out of that. These are the major races of the year for Norwegian kids and similar to our own JN’s. Qualification is necessary, and each region sends a team. Thanks to Bjorn, to the host club of Kjelsaas and to Per Nymoen and the organizing committee of the Norwegian Ski Federation, for letting us join in. We really appreciate the opportunity!

    We put the team together with athletes from across the US and had a gang that represented US junior skiing well. Thomas Rabon, and Jack Hegman are BMA seniors and were in Europe on the “Scando Cup” J1 trip. With them was Heidi Halvorsen from GMVS. When the Holmenkollen opportunity popped up they decided to forego the US JN’s and to stay on in Europe, training with the NTG gang and some local clubs in Oslo. Monday, the 12th of March, barely flight time from the US JN’s in Soldier Hollow, Ben Saxton from Minnesota and the Midwest Team, Kevin Bolger, and Jack Steele who are both finishing up PG years with the Sun Valley team joined us in Oslo. A last minute change created an opening for Ian Moore, a J1 from coastal Maine.

    On the ground at Holmenkollen

    On the first team practice up at Holmenkollen, the Canadian National team was taking a post-World Cup easy ski up at the venue and the gang talked some of the ‘guns’ into a picture. I enjoyed a nice visit with Justin Wadsworth before the team headed off to the Palace Sprint in Stockholm and the finals in Falun. Justin is enjoying his role as the Canadian head coach, and it seems like the mood on the team is ‘Up’ and eager.

    Our gang with Team Canada after the World Cup at Holmenkollen.

    Among the goals for this trip was putting US juniors into a large competition in a foreign setting and exposing them to the demands of a team assembled from different regions at short notice. The experiences of foreign food, transportation, race protocols, and the necessity for increased independence and self reliance were all part of the design. Another deliberate design for the trip was to provide the chance to legitimately place oneself on a broader based speed, fitness, and ability scale; a chance to see where one “stacks up” with good skiers from one of the world’s foremost ski countries.

    It all happened. Weather and snow conditions were challenging. After the sun and warmth that met the World Cup 50 and 30 k races, courses were hammered. There was even talk of a venue move but in the end, the huge volunteer work force worked its magic and the races went off at Holmenkollen. The first day’s classic distance races of 7.5, 10, 15 and 20 km, depending on gender and age class, were held in thick, chilling fog. That was a somewhat sobering introduction and probably the one that set people back on their ears a bit.

    In spite of an obvious bruising, everyone rallied well and as the schedule developed for the next day the mood was good. Having the efficient and fast public transportation almost from our door to the venue was both fun and reassuring and another part of the whole experience. It let me get to the venue early and set up wax benches, touch base with the testers (big thanks to Endre and Henrik from Sport 1!), and do the final touch up of skis, while the athletes were able to leave the house on their own and get up to the courses comfortably for warm up and not have to stand around in the fog.

    We think Heidi Halvorsen is the middle shadow!

    The skate race started off with the girls, again in fog. Heidi Halvorsen endured a high speed crash, and bounced back to claim a very solid 17th place. While a couple of ours were still finding their feet, results were better and people happier. The sense of where we were was coming clearer, and over all it was encouraging. The top third of a field of 450 guys and 350 girls is not a bad place from which to start working. Even those who came from US JN’s with podium places to their credit were seeing and positively reacting to what was going down in Oslo. There is work to do and seeing the field there gave perspective to the project.

    Third Leg of the relay. Thomas Rabon.

    On the morning of the relay the fog was thick in town but as I drove up toward the venue I popped into bright morning sun. Courses were open and firm and visible. There had been a light freeze during the night, and having made the decision to change the relay to all skate legs to keep the quality of the course up, the organizers lightly salted the parts of the course most affected by the sun. That leveled the field a lot.

    Jack Hegman (33) Scrambling for the Yanks.

    We had a core relay team of Jack Hegman, Kevin Bolger, Tom Rabon, and Ben Saxton and the others all found berths on Norwegian teams. In the Men’s division there were 111 four-man relay teams and over 60 in the women’s. Our guys were seeded at number 33 and finished at number 34 which put them comfortably in the top third. While I could see deep tiredness in some parts of the course, overall it was clearly the best day for the gang and everyone was up and happy with the effort.

    Recognition to Top 40 Relay Teams (out of 111) Team US under the middle light post.

    It was a good trip and for me reaffirmed the importance of getting the big picture without over-emphasizing junior results. Placing personal skills and training levels into a bigger frame of reference and one that rewards effort, work, patience and dedication, is an approach we in this country cannot use often enough.

    Fun and challenging indoor balance basics workout with NTG-U

    Hopefully we’ll be able to do this again. It was good for Burke Mountain Academy’s kids, and we certainly enjoyed the participation of athletes from other programs in the country. Thanks to our Norwegian hosts for opening their homes to us and special thanks Bjorn Ilsemann and his gang from the NTG-U for the invitation, logistic support, and fun pre-race workouts. Let us know if you have interest in joining us or helping to support the trip next year.

  • BMA Nordic goes International in 2012

    BMA Nordic goes International in 2012

    2012 Fall in Scandinavia

    “Small is Beautiful”

    For Burke Mountain Academy’s small Nordic Team the flexibility of the school’s yearly plan makes a lot of exciting things possible. We are particularly excited about our calendar for next year and the tremendous opportunity it is presenting. In September and October the Nordic team will take on intensive introductory language work in Swedish and/or Norwegian and the language skill will get an immediate workout. For the following four to six weeks in October and November the Team will live, train and participate in early season races in Scandinavia. The connections we have made over the years of “The Sweden Trip” in both Sweden and Norway are opening the way to a special experience. The season of the transition from dry land to snow is a perfect time to be on the ground and training with other top juniors. We will work closely with three different ski academies,  train with local clubs, take part in testing and observation of advanced testing in the sport science department of a Swedish university, and compete in a pre-World Cup race series in Bruksvallarna, Sweden, toward the end of November. Community investment in snow making in Bruks guarantees early snow. Housing is in ski oriented condominium units in Lillehammer in Norway and Ostersund in Sweden. We will manage most of our own cooking etc. following Burke’s model of shared responsibility. The Team won’t just travel there. We’ll live there! What better way to get a feel for Nordic life in that part of the world?

     

    Burke’s PG’s will travel to Scandinavia a week before the rest of the team and will get the lay of the land and the programs available. They will take on the job of helping to ease the acclimatization process for the rest of the gang when it arrives at the beginning of November. In a sense this is an immersion program, but de-tuned slightly by having the comfort of known friends and the mother tongue close at hand. We will return to Vermont and Burke for December classes and the bulk of our home season. For anyone entertaining the idea of a year abroad as a skier this would be a valuable in-depth introduction and for everyone else a chance to make new friends, push training to a new level, and to get a start on a new language. Details are still coming together, but there is no doubt that this will be a special time to be part of the Burke Nordic experience. 2012 and 2013 it will be a season that opens many doors.

     

    If you are interested in more information about either the PG program or  BMA’s regular Nordic program please contact us.

     http://www.burkemtnacademy.org/

    Peter Phillips, Head Nordic Coach pphillips@burkemtnacademy.org

    Kate Barton, Asst. Nordic Coach, Admissions consultant kbarton@burkemtnacademy.org

    Tory Amorello, Director of Admissions tamorello@burkemtnacademy.org

  • Burke Mountain Academy’s Norway Trip – Up Near the End

     

    The final week at Sognefjell has seen the training hours increasing steadily for almost everyone. Occasionally a coach has stepped in and “suggested” an afternoon or morning off. With great trails right out the door it is pretty easy to keep at it, so now and again the voice of reason needs to be heard.

     

    We have been lucky with the weather. There has been a little rain now and again, but no wind and no downpours. Lot’s of broken cloud and as much sunny and clear as cloudy. The grooming has been superb. The picture of Sunday, the 26th of June’s morning workout shows that pretty well. The picture is of the climb on the west end of the trail with the massif of Fanaraken and its hanging glacier in the background.

     

    It has been fun running into Norwegian kids we skied with in Sun Valley at Spring Series and sharing some time on the trails here. Our older skiers have taken full advantage of the other teams here and of our Swedish friends who have kept a fun amount of intensity and spark in the training. From a coach’s point of view it has been rewarding to see how much improvement happens and sinks in simply when kids ski behind better skiers…less talk, more action and it works.

     

    This has been an exceptional trip and thanks go out to all the participants and their families, to Matt Johnson, BMA’s former Asst Coach and the new Program Director for The Utah Nordic Alliance, Erik Nilsson, the team captain/mgr for Team Ex Spirit from Sweden, Gustav Eriksson from the Swedish Devo Team, and Raamund Munhjeld and the crew at the Sognefjell Hytte in Lom, Norway. This was the eleventh year of the trip and may well have been the best. Everyone’s contribution to the mix is very much appreciated.

     

  • Mea Culpa: A Coach Learns a Lesson… Again

    Mea Culpa: A Coach Learns a Lesson… Again

    Pete Phillips has a coaching resume that is one of the best in North America.  He is currently the Head Nordic Coach at Burke Mountain Academy in East Burke, Vermont.

    The races this last weekend had a lesson in them for me. Unfortunately for one of my athletes it was a lesson I have already learned and should have remembered but did not. I didn’t pay for the refresher either; he did.

    As coaches we can get preoccupied with something and we can miss, or overlook some important unconscious messages coming in from our athletes. Even after doing this for thirty years, I missed a big one.

    Two weeks ago, at the third of four race weekends in our season, I pooched the kick wax on the classic day. It wasn’t wrong, but I missed some pretty obvious weather signs, and put too much on. The skis climbed well, and didn’t ice but they were slow and on the courses we were working that was a bad thing. I was mad and my focus narrowed. The stage was set for the refresher to begin.

    With four kids on the right side of the bubble for New England’s JO team but still too close for comfort, I was determined not to foul the wax again. We had a good plan for workouts leading in, a couple of head colds went down for some rest, recovered well, and the training end of things was chugging along almost on autopilot. I was able to really focus on getting skis cleaned, edges smooth, and on the pattern of the weather. The test fleet was zeroed out and ready to quickly eliminate a lot of the guess work at what is almost always a klister race. The team seemed happy and up for the first day’s skate race and things went well but I was missing something. One of the athletes had a decent skate day, but not quite what we had expected or hoped for. It wasn’t from easing off because he thought he was “in”; he worked hard but the snap wasn’t quite there. The bilge alarm was going off and I didn’t hear it or see it. I was thinking about getting things right the next day. I didn’t have all the sensors out and I missed this one. The long and short of the rest of the weekend is that we did have good wax but the same athlete ran out of gas at about 7 kilometers, dropped two places in the standings and ended up on the alternates list. What happened?

    For the two days of the race weekend I missed obvious signs of a lack of energy, and after the first day of racing I made the serious mistake of not looking into the lackluster performance more closely. Re-running the race tactically or technically is not what I mean; what should have been done was putting in a little more time listening to and looking at the athlete himself. Hind sight is agonizingly clear here. He had not been eating well, probably for some time. Sunday’s race went off at noon, and his breakfast at 7:30 consisted of “a bagel and cream cheese, and a blueberry muffin”. I subsequently found the bagel and cream cheese wrapped in foil on the console of the van.

    He had raced 10 k’s on Saturday, ate lunch on the fly, and had a decent but smallish pasta dinner. On Sunday he ate one blueberry muffin (read simple sugar), at 7:30 AM and at noon tried to race another 10 K’s at 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Thinking back, my guess is that breakfast the day before, the day of the skate race, was similar. What really makes me ashamed of myself is that we are at a ski academy and I see the athletes everyday several times. In fact, I remember thinking two weeks ago that he looked a little thin and that I needed to nag him a bit about keeping up the calories. Of course this may not have been the only reason things fell off. The competition put in two excellent races in a row, and skied hard and well. But still, he went to the line without being sure the tank was full.

    I can preach taking care of himself and eating well and wisely on his own and talk independence until I am blue in the face, but the reality is he is seventeen and I am supposed to be teaching these things. For the time being the buck, or at least 75 cents of it, still stops here.

    So what is the point of this mea culpa? I guess it is perhaps to share the fact that no matter how long we have been doing this, we should still go over the check list with each athlete each time. Make a better time budget to do a better job.

    The other thing is that especially with juniors, and I think even more so with American juniors because our breakfast choices aren’t very good to begin with, and if there are two working parents, the choices generally stink, they need to be reminded and educated about food and its role in one of the toughest sports in the world. We need to be on that much more than we are, and instead of being victims of marketing and instant simple sugar fixes, and expensive bars we need kids to buy into more slow burn dense fuel as part of the training regimen. Convincing kids to do intervals is easy. Convincing them to eat right is a bigger project, but it has just jumped to the top of my pile.

    Thanks for listening. Go eat a can of sardines.

  • For Arritola and Stephen, Rest is Theme in Second World Cup Season

    Morgan Arritola in the 10 k freestyle at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games

    For elite skiers, resting well can be just as important as high-quality training. Morgan Arritola and Liz Stephen each learned that lesson the hard way, and both say that next year, they won’t make the same mistakes again.

    Arritola, 24, and Stephen, 23, are entering their second year of World Cup racing for the U.S. Ski Team (USST). Both struggled to maintain their form for the full duration of their rookie winter, and neither cracked the top-30 at the Olympics in Vancouver. But now, as the 2010-2011 season kicks off, the two are refocusing, and have set their sights on the 2011 World Ski Championships in Oslo.

    Normally, Stephen makes running a big part of her training, but she said that a foot injury last year led to a regimen of 85 percent rollerskiing, leaving her “exhausted” for the Games.

    Liz Stephen racing at the 2010 U.S. National Championships in Anchorage. Photo, Rob Whitney.

    “I certainly overdid the rollerskiing last summer,” she said. “I don’t know how much of a choice I had, but I…didn’t get in the shape I wanted to get in.”

    The injury has improved, though, and Stephen has been running this spring without any trouble. And even if she has to cut back, she said, “it won’t be as much rollerskiing as it has been last summer.”

    “I’ll find another way to get fit,” she said.

    Stephen and Noah Hoffman are the only USST members living in Park City for the whole summer, but Stephen said she’ll be far from lonely. There are University of Utah students training in town, juniors and U-23 groups coming in for development camps, and USST trips to Bend and New Zealand. And she can always ski with Hoffman.

    “Noah is a great training buddy, even though I can’t keep up with him most days,” Stephen said.

    Stephen’s goals for 2010-2011 are twofold. First, she wants to consistently place in the top-30 on the World Cup, with some stronger results early in the season “to get the confidence back up.” And then, there’s Oslo, where Stephen said she hopes to improve on her results from the 2009 World Championships in the Czech Republic.

    Unless the early part of the year goes “incredibly well,” don’t expect to see her in the Tour de Ski.

    “I think about it all the time…but I don’t think it’s in the cards for this coming year,” she said.

    Arritola also will skip the Tour; she said she needs to up her sprinting game before entering—and she wants to make sure she’s firing on all cyclinders for Oslo.

    Arritola will be training out of Ketchum, Idaho, where she works with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. She’s not

    Arritola racing in Canmore last year.

    planning on doing much differently from last year, aside from a little more training, and more rest.

    “Just making the easier days easier, and really focusing on recovering well and not starting a hard week right off the bat if I’m not fully recovered,” Arritola said. “I think that might have been one of my problems last year…that I just didn’t rest quite enough.”

    One thing Arritola will focus on is her closing speed—her ability to ratchet up the pace at the tail end of distance races, and fight for places. That means she’ll finish some moderate interval sessions with speed bursts, “to try to mimic the final sprint of a distance race.”

    Neither of the two women will spend much time on the domestic circuit, but when they do, both will be supported by their home clubs—Arritola by Sun Valley, and Stephen by Burke Mountain Academy, where she went to high school.

    Topher Sabot contributed reporting.

  • A September Day at Burke Mountain Academy

    A September Day at Burke Mountain Academy

    The heat has broken, and the perfect early fall weather New England is enjoying makes training a pleasure. The Burke Gang is taking full advantage of it. Here is a day-in-the-life from last week:

    6:00 AM: An easy warm up on the playing fields.
    6:00 AM: An easy warm up on the playing fields.
    Evan Martell builds up steam in a speed session.
    Evan Martell builds up steam in a speed session.
    Spenst follows speed. Lateral jumps up Alpine Lane in the shade of the Mountain.
    Spenst follows speed. Lateral jumps up Alpine Lane in the shade of the Mountain.
    Spenst, Speed, and Strength. AM session wraps up with a few sets of “Med Ball Tennis” before breakfast.
    Spenst, Speed, and Strength. AM session wraps up with a few sets of “Med Ball Tennis” before breakfast.

    Classes from 8:45 until 3:00 then…

    10 K’s of steady climb through the Kingdom rounds out the afternoon workout.
    10 K’s of steady climb through the Kingdom rounds out the afternoon workout.
    Wrapped up with dinner on the deck.
    Wrapped up with dinner on the deck.
  • A “Spring Series” in Sweden and Finland

    A “Spring Series” in Sweden and Finland

    There are several races in the North this spring that coincide with April break and Easter. We’ve arranged for a small group to do a two race series that includes a continuous pursuit in Pitea in Northern Sweden, two races in Tornio, and Rovaniemi, in Finland and three more in Bruksvallarna, Sweden in a fun wrap up to the season. The Pitea and Bruksvallarna races will likely be of a very high standard as most of the Swedish team will attend and juniors will be mixed in with the big guns. All races require FIS numbers and provide points.

    The group will be small, @ 6 athletes and the trip is geared toward J1- U-23 ages. Ground cost: lodging, rental van, and most food is estimated at @ $2300-2500 for April 1 – 21. Some hotels, some crashing with athletes from the ski gymnasium in Solleftea. We’ll spend quite a bit of time with local coaches and skiers.

    A “Spring Series” in Sweden and Finland
    A “Spring Series” in Sweden and Finland

    Course Inspection, Bruksvallarna, Sweden. March
    The touring in between could be awesome. Food is good too. Three spots remain. Flights to a common meeting point are fine. Good prices out of Boston. Details and a final “go/no go” decision on 6, Feb.

    Contact:
    Pete Phillips
    Head Nordic Coach,
    Burke Mountain Academy 802-626-1516-ext 1010, 518-524-4127
    pphillips@burkemtnacademy.org
    gamlefisken@yahoo.com