Registration is open for the Stratton Mountain School BKL Summer Camp, which runs August 3-6, 2026, on the SMS campus in Stratton Mountain, Vermont. The camp is open to athletes ages 10 to 14, with a maximum grade of eighth.
The four-day program is built around progressive skill work in a low-pressure setting. Hiking, swimming, roller skiing, ski bounding, and games are all on the schedule, along with the camp’s annual lip-sync contest. Campers will also sit down with members of the SMS T2 Elite Team for a Q&A — the T2 group has put skiers on World Cup and Olympic start lists, and the session is one of the camp’s longer-running traditions.
The camp is split into two sections, one for male athletes and one for female athletes, both running the same August 3-6 dates. Registration and payment deadlines are both July 31, 2026.
If the camp fills before the deadline, SMS is keeping a waitlist through a Google form linked on the registration page. Note that the form does not allow duplicate phone numbers. Cancellations made fewer than 30 days before the camp start date are non-refundable.
For questions, contact Nordic Program Director Matt Boobar at mboobar@gosms.org or 570-594-7555.
Jessie Diggins brought home a couple of small trophies last season. *smirk* (Photo: NordicFocus)
Team name and location: SMS T2 Team; Stratton Mountain, Vermont
Coach: Patrick O’Brien
Current roster: Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Katharine Ogden, Alayna Sonnesyn, Lina Sutro (women); Ian Torchia, Bill Harmeyer, Ben Ogden, Will Koch (men)
Who’s new: Lina Sutro, coming from the University of Vermont ski team
Who’s moved on: Sophie Caldwell Hamilton and Simi Hamilton, who celebrated their second wedding anniversary earlier this year, retired from pro skiing last spring and are beginning a new life together in Colorado. Ben Saxton also retired.
Julia Kern races in classic sprint qualification in Oberstdorf. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Top results last season: Diggins, deservedly, got the headlines, for winning the World Cup overall, the distance globe, and the Tour de Ski, all firsts for an American woman. (Bill Koch won the inaugural World Cup overall title in 1981/1982 to provide her only American competition here, though if you want to split hairs about it Koch’s World Cup season looked a little shorter than Diggins’s.)
After Diggins, Kern had a down season, by her lofty standards, but still notched an 11th and 12th in World Cup sprint finals. Ben Ogden was the top American man in the World Championships sprint, qualifying 11th and finishing 17th overall, and qualified 3rd at World U23s en route to an 11th-place finish. Katharine Ogden raced a full season of distance races on the World Cup, highlighted by 23rd overall in the Tour de Ski, and finished 38th in the distance standings for the year.
Domestically, Rochester, Minn., native Ian Torchia won the skate American Birkebeiner, then gave an all-time classic finish-line interview while slumped exhausted in the snow, interrupting his gasps to drink some chocolate milk handed to him by a concerned onlooker. Not to be outdone, Plymouth, Minn., native Sonnesyn won the skate Birkie, and was second in the classic Birkie.
Ian Torchia, far right, leads bounding intervals up Stratton Mountain in summer 2021. (photo: courtesy SMS)
Coach’s comments: Coach Pat wrote as follows:
“The dryland season has gone very well for our group. It’s hard to imagine just a few short months ago we were doing hot sweaty hill bounding and rollerski intervals in Stratton, but fall is certainly here and the winter season feels just around the corner. The air is cool and crisp, the leaves are mostly down and soon we will be seeing our first glimpse of snow at the higher elevations in the Green Mountains.
“We had a productive and steady dryland season. We kicked off the training year back in May with many athletes out in Bend, Oregon, for our startup on snow and dryland camp. From June till August we were primarily based out of Vermont with some small ‘mini camps’ and fun adventures but no major travel or camps afar. One thing we learned overall as a program from the pandemic and travel restrictions in place in Vermont last year is that while variety is the spice of life, skiers are made in the summer, and time spent traveling is time that impacts recovery and training opportunities, so with the cancelation of a July glacier camp in Alaska and the wildfire/smoke situation in the greater American West, we just put our heads down and focused on high quality but training in the Green Mountain state for June-August. Fortunately for us, aside from the ever present rain and humidity that Vermont is known for, we have incredible roller skiing, running, biking, and strength and conditioning facilities in Stratton and the greater area so we never need to go far to find high quality dryland training.
SMS athletes in the ski tunnel (from left: Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, Alayna Sonnesyn, Lina Sutro), Oberhof, Germany, September 2021. (photo: courtesy SMS)
“The two areas that we did make a conscious decision to target this year in addition to stable dryland blocks, were on snow time and training at altitude. Traditionally we travel to New Zealand for 2-3 weeks at the end of August and the start of September. The skiing (being wintertime in the southern hemisphere) is high quality and representative of actual ski conditions unlike glacier snow that can often be rotten, slow, and located at high altitudes. While we weren’t able to get on snow as a program last year due to the pandemic and Vermont travel restrictions, many athletes still achieved standout results last winter but we did recognize it put our athletes at a competitive disadvantage in the early season where athletes were getting their ski legs under them so we sought to find on snow training options this year. We were hoping to have New Zealand as an option but with their tight quarantine policies and lack of widespread vaccinations it became clear by July that was unlikely to change. Instead we traveled to the ski tunnel in Oberhof, Germany, to grab 10 days of high quality on snow training which turned out to be a great replacement camp. Being three months removed from skiing should make the transition to snow in Kuusamo a little easier and faster than being six months without contacting snow as we did last year. As an East Coast based team traveling to and from Europe was also a helpful reminder for the time change and travel athletes will be undergoing again shortly in a few weeks.
“The final area we did want to focus on was getting in some time and harder efforts at altitude. With the Olympic venue being at around 5500 feet we were able to practice skiing at a similar elevation out in Bend, Oregon, back in May and recently finished a great dryland camp in Park City complete with many harder efforts and time trials at Soldier Hollow which is nearly the same elevation as the Olympic venue and equally demanding terrain as what we should see this coming February.
From left, Jessie Diggins, Katharine Ogden, Lina Sutro (partially obscured), Alayna Sonnesyn, and Julie Kern rollerskiing in Vermont in summer 2021. (photo: courtesy SMS)
“Our athletes are looking forward to the coming race season because it is shaping up to be a ‘return towards normal.’ Both the limited options for domestic racing and the strict restrictions needed for safe racing on the international level were very difficult for elite athletes last year.Certainly there will still be safety protocols in place, disruptions, and some uncertainty as we continue to navigate our way out of this pandemic, but the prospect for a complete race season both on World Cup and at a national level is very encouraging. We have all been vaccinated and many of our group have already received their booster shots so some of the uncertainty and apprehension of travel has been reduced. We can now focus on what we all love to do; ski racing with a robust national and international calendar!”
Sverre Caldwell instructing SMS athletes. (Photo: George Forbes)
“I am not making them great. They are making themselves great.” – Sverre Caldwell
Long-time Stratton Mountain School (SMS) coach Sverre Caldwell will step down at the end of this school year. According to an article in the Bennington Banner, during Caldwell’s tenure, SMS sent 15 cross-country skiers to the Winter Olympics. SMS also had at least one Junior National champion and one World Junior team member for 24 consecutive years. Caldwell was U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Coach of the Year in 2001, 2003, and 2009.
Caldwell’s name became synonymous with SMS as the cross-country ski program has evolved over the years. He began his career at SMS in 1980 with a small core of athletes. Along with his coaching duties, Caldwell initially taught Math and took on the role of headmaster for four years beginning in 1992.
In the matter-of-fact tone of someone understanding where their strengths lay, Caldwell deadpanned, “so I was headmaster for four years and did not enjoy that, so I went back to coaching. I have worn a lot of different hats, but mainly ski coach except for those four years as headmaster. So I have been ski coach with occasional teaching, those are the different roles I have played at SMS.”
The academic and outdoor sports focus of SMS calls for two parallel staffs: one dedicated to academic classroom work, the other focused on developing athletes on the alpine slopes, cross-country trails, and halfpipes.
“Because the coaches travel so much in the winter and everyone is on different schedules,” Caldwell said. “You can envision that nordic skiers don’t travel as much. But a lot of the alpine races are midweek because the alpine mountains don’t want to close their trails on the weekends. So it would be hard for me who is off to senior nationals for ten days and off to junior nationals for ten days to be teaching a bunch of alpine kids the little bit of time when they are around.”
Due to those time constraints, Caldwell’s work with younger athletes revolved around his cross-country coaching. Along the way, he also helped establish an elite team. Initially known as the SMS Elite Team, that training and racing group is currently called SMS T2. Current and former SMS T2 athletes include Jessie Diggins, Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, and Sophie Caldwell.
Sverre Caldwell encouraging SMS skier Clarissa Pollard in Lake Placid. (Photo: George Forbes)
The following is a conversation between Jason Albert and Caldwell on April 30, during which Caldwell reflected on his career.
FasterSkier: Much has changed in sport since you began in 1980 at Stratton. Can you reflect a bit on what you personally have changed when it comes to your craft?
Sverre Caldwell: What I have done really hasn’t changed that much. Having had your average of 10 to 15 kids a year for almost 40 years, it is always a variation on the theme. But you are training year-round for skiing. So I might go ‘this year we are really going to work on this’ and it turns out to be one workout a week different. Everyone is going to [train] a lot of distance and some intensity and it depends on when or how hard you want to go and when you want to introduce the intensity.
From my perspective, I have always tried to think of myself as a teacher of cross-country skiing. You just kind of help reach the kids as much as you can so that they can learn what makes them click. And it is really important that they take ownership. So I am trying to help them make decisions that are going to help them.
I am not making them great. They are making themselves great and I am going to help them figure out how to do that.
I know it has changed because I used to be young and athletic and lead all the workouts. Now I can’t keep up with anyone so I’m watching. You know the educational piece and teaching them a sport has evolved, but that has not really changed dramatically. When I started coaching here, no one trained year round for skiing. If anyone joined the program, it was pretty much instant success because they were training year-round for skiing and very few other people were doing that. Now, a lot of people are training year-round for skiing. It has gotten more competitive and you look at international results and it shows. It is pretty cool. We have had three different skiers in the last three years get medals at World Juniors. And twenty years ago we were not getting medals at World Juniors. Competition is improving because a lot of people are doing a better job and the clubs are really helping that.
Another piece of that change that I think has also helped the Stratton program is having started an elite club. We have our SMS T2 people training here and the kids can see Jessie and Sophie and Simi and Andy Newell, some of the best skiers in the world. They did what we did. So here is a pathway.
FS: What is one key take away from having your younger athletes in close proximity to SMS T2 skiers?
SC: My goal is always to have people to go into their biggest races expecting to do well because they have confidence. They know ‘when I do this I can ski well.’ So then you do whatever ‘this’ is before your big races. You go in with confidence versus hoping to do well. It really helps when you have that pathway of success and you can see that and you can say ‘oh, ok I can see why we are doing this and I can see why we are not doing a lot of hard intensity here in the spring and summer. Because those guys don’t do it either’. They are just building up patience and keeping a long term approach. The SMS T2 skiers tend to be good athletes and are as efficient as possible and all that sort of stuff that we preach to the younger skiers.
FS: It comes with the territory with an environment like SMS — parents with high expectations and demands when it comes to performance. That’s a dicey road to navigate.
SC: That has definitely evolved. Recently, it has become easier because I am older than all the parents. I remember when I started, parents were these scary people. Back then, I was just very enthusiastic and the team was doing well and everyone was going ‘oh this is great’. At this point, this is a major way that relationship has evolved. When people come in to interview if they are deciding if they want to come here next year, we say, ‘this is the way our program works and this is the way we do it’. And so they’re coming in and they are choosing this program because we have had great success and they are trusting that we know what we are doing. For the most part that has worked very well. That really hasn’t been much of an issue.
FS: In many ways, you are the East Coast sage of junior coaching. Do you field lots of calls from other coaches seeking advice?
SC: I enjoy talking to people and some people do. I can always talk skiing. Since I’m sure they will think, ‘why did I even ask him because he won’t shut up or something?’.
It is fun talking to different people and discussing issues that different programs have and helping them figure out how to do a different angle or something. It is not like I know everything. But I do enjoy talking about stuff and I think that our success has been because we have been really focused on helping each individual athlete, being patient, and looking at the big picture.
FS: One thing you have going on at SMS is resources. SMS life is not cheap. Does that play into the success?
SC: I think a lot of it is resources and a lot of it is education. I feel the educational part is really important. The kids understand why we are having them do different things. Education and ownership. I’ll see people come into our T2 team and it is like ‘Jesus, these guys just think if hard is good, harder is better’. It is like, ‘where in the hell have they been?’ They need to know how it all fits together. So the educational piece I think is very important. I would like to think that we train smarter than most people and I know some people train harder then we do. It is not like we are not training hard, but we don’t want to train too hard and burn out in February for example.
FS: I forgot to ask, how old are you?
SC: I am 64 years old.
FS:I consider that to be pretty young.
SC: Nobody in my family says that.
FS: Have you been thinking of retiring for a while?
SC: I actually decided, probably two or three years ago. And it was a combination of a bunch of things. One is, (laughter), I was inspired by Big Poppy… that’s my baseball reference. I thought it was pretty cool that when he went out, people were kind of going ‘why don’t you stay?’ I didn’t want to be here so long that people were going, ‘I cannot wait for him to leave.’ That was a piece of it.
I had a winter term sabbatical three years ago and Lily, my wife, and I traveled in Europe for something like 10 to 12 weeks and that was really fun. And so part of the plan was to be able to travel a little more and spend time with my wife. I still love coaching, but I am getting tired of all the administrative parts. I just want if I can spend more time with my wife and travel a little more and just back off that is going to be awesome and I believe you only go around once and so I didn’t want to … I don’t want to turn into this guy who is working for pay instead of working for passion. I wanted to leave on a good note. Leave on top. (Laughter.
A combination of all that. With Lily getting cancer, it was this is a good decision and I need to spend time with her and hopefully do stuff like that.
FS: Do you plan to stay involved with the school in some capacity?
SC: I will. I am definitely planning on helping with SMS T2 the same way I have the last whatever many years the SMS T2 team has been in existence. It is hard when you get old, you start to forget. That is another reason I am retiring.
While I have been coaching at Stratton, I have been administering the T2 team so the coaches can coach and don’t have to be out running around raising money and finding housing and stuff like that. I am going to continue in that role, making sure that Patrick [O’brien] doesn’t have to do too much of that grunt work and I can make sure the program is viable and we can run and keep thinking about what we need to do to be better.
That is the part that was not paid for through the school, but it was obviously a benefit to the school. So I am going to keep doing that. I have not talked to the school about what my role is with them. Matt Boobar will be taking over my job which is great and he has been here for ten years. We have been sharing an office and we can complete each other’s sentences. And so that is going to be a very smooth transition. I will be around. I will be available. At this point, I don’t have any job or contracted affiliation. I will be there, to chat with them and help however needed. But he needs to be able to run the program himself without me sitting here. I need to give him the distance. I will help however I can. What I foresee, if I am doing more coaching it will be going out more with the T2 team and talking to Pat more about what I am seeing. But, once again, without trying to tread on him.
It is always a tricky balance when you have been around and someone thinks they know a lot so they come in and dictate. It has to be this thing like where am I going to be useful and going to be helpful.
I still love working with kids. I am ready not to do it full time.
Stratton Mountain School is seeking a Nordic Coach for the 2019-20 season and beyond. This is a full time career based coaching position. Candidates should have experience in most aspects of junior cross country ski racing. Preferred start date between June 15th and August 10th.
School Philosophy:
Stratton Mountain School provides a unique environment that offers each student the opportunity to pursue excellence in competitive winter sports and college preparatory academics while developing strong personal values.
Nordic Program Philosophy:
The SMS Nordic program strives to develop individuals with an appreciation for an outdoor lifestyle and a love for their sport while providing every opportunity for success at the highest levels. Nordic skiers at Stratton are expected to be model students, dedicated athletes, supportive teammates and exemplary citizens of the SMS community.
We take a long term approach to training and development. Athlete education is a significant focus in our development philosophy. We create a team based environment and provide the tools for the student athletes to understand and take ownership of the processes that lead to improvement and personal success. Understanding how all aspects (personal, academic, social, family, athletic) of a student athlete’s life contribute to success are also a priority. We utilize the most current technical information, available technology, use of field tests and video feedback on technique and biomechanics. Skiers leave SMS with the knowledge needed to continue to progress as athletes whether they move on to a collegiate ski program or the US Ski Team. Check out this site: List Of All Cryptocurrencies . You can find everything you need to know about cryptocurrency in it. It includes a daily collection of news and live prices, as well as charts and other information about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and many other cryptocurrencies.
Essential Qualifications:
3-5 years coaching experience including junior national qualifying racing
Passion for coaching and developing young athletes in a positive way that promotes a healthy outdoor lifestyle
Ability to build a confidence inspiring relationship with a team.
Coaching at Junior Nationals
Understanding and ability to use social media
Experience leading and planning trips within region, out of region.
General ski service knowledge
Safesport and USS Level 100 certified
Passion for endurance sports and a healthy lifestyle.
Preferred Qualifications:
Understanding of USS and NENSA competition rules and qualification criteria for Junior Level racing.
Understanding of periodized training plans
Level 200 USS Nordic coach certification
Coaching at National and International races
Current knowledge of leading wax products,tools, application techniques and testing procedures
Basic understanding of current high level racing equipment, ski fleet development, etc.
Overview:
Full time position, medical benefits, meals on campus, possible campus housing.
Salary is professionally competitive. Based on: experience, campus housing arrangement, additional duties, total benefits package and other factors the candidate brings to the program and school community.
Training 6 days week. 6-9, 1-3 hour workouts. Sundays typically off in Fall/Spring, Mondays in winter.
Assist with admissions, recruiting, school, program marketing, oversee social media presence.
Directly oversee a group of 3-6 athletes, helping them with long term planning, goal setting, daily training adjustments, training logs.
Weekend race travel within region. Opportunities for higher level championship race travel out of region and international.
2 week Fall Camp
1 week summer camp planning and coaching
Expected to available for summer training sessions offer
High School XC running and MTB races in Fall, Road, gravel, MTB cycling, running in Spring
Residential life duties dependent on housing package.
Please submit cover letter, resume, further questions to Matt Boobar at mboobar@gosms.org.
Author Alayna Sonnesyn during a crust ski at the Snow Farm this summer near Wanaka, New Zealand. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
The following was written by Alayna Sonnesyn, a new member of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team who graduated from the University of Vermont (UVM) this past spring.
Originally from Plymouth, Minnesota, Sonnesyn, 22, raced on the UVM Ski Team for four years and qualified for four NCAA Skiing Championships teams. She placed second and third in two races at 2017 NCAA Championships, and in her senior season, won the first five Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA) races and went on to reach the podium in 10 out of 11 EISA races. Sonnesyn expressed an interest in exploring the dilemma many of the nation’s top skiing talents face out of high school: whether to attend college or get an early jump on a pro-racing career. Part 1 can be viewed here, and the two-part series is also on her blog.
***
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics about 70 percent of 2017 high school graduates enrolled in some form of college the following fall. In addition, a handful of the working population decided to either start college after a few years or return to classes after a much-needed hiatus. But what happens if you stray from the norm … and something pulls you in another direction? For Jessie Diggins and Andy Newell, there were alternative ideas for the future.
At the time, both Jessie and Andy followed the same route, exploring collegiate racing right out of high school. Similar to many high school skiers, they went through the process of applying to schools, talking to coaches and establishing academic opportunities for themselves after graduation.
Jessie Diggins being goofy during our recent training camp in New Zealand. (Photo: Julia Kern)
“When I decided to go full-skiing, I had deferred a place at NMU, and had that as my Plan B if I decided that full-time skiing was too stressful or not as fun as I wanted it to be,” Jessie said.
“What I decided to do was defer from UVM, but I was also able to take some classes from the University of Utah with tuition reimbursement and a loaned laptop courtesy of the US Ski Team,” Andy explained.
At the time, both skiers were still open to going to college, but decided to “take a year off.” The only difference was that they never experienced that longing to go back into full-time school. As previously mentioned in Part 1 of this series, many skiers who decided to take a gap year soon came to the realization that something was missing and that they still wanted a balance in their life. It made sense for them to go back to school and ski in college. But why change something when you’re already happy?
According to Jessie, “At the end of the day, a happy skier is a fast skier… For me, I was super happy having all my eggs in one basket and making skiing my full-time job. I love having skiing as my career, and I perform well under stress so having the pressure of becoming a professional athlete at a young age didn’t create too much anxiety.”
This stress worked well for Jessie. With such a unique combination of personality, work ethic, and training load, she knew taking this route would be better for her.
“Personally, going to college wasn’t going to work for me if I wanted to get the grades I wanted and train as hard as I wanted,” she said.
Jessie went on to note how important it is to figure out your own personality; whether you can do a good job at balancing school and skiing, or whether you’re excited to focus all of your time and energy on one goal. She found that specificity suited her lifestyle really well after high school and carried that momentum for years to follow.
Similarly, Andy found success from a young age and didn’t see a reason to change what was already working so well for him.
“To get that kind of international exposure was sweet for a junior, but more importantly it got me hooked on skiing — the addiction to the big show and excitement of European racing,” Andy said of racing at World Juniors, U23’s and World Championships his first year out of high school.
With the need for speed and an obvious progression into becoming an elite skier, Newell admitted that he pretty much gave up any opportunities for racing in college after he started signing contracts and collecting win money. Although, he notes that the ski racing environment was slightly different at the time he made this choice. In high school, Andy was named to the U.S. D-team, which, at the time, provided free housing in Park City, access to daily coaching, and most of the Winter travel expenses covered.
“I consider myself lucky that the U.S. Ski Team was in a position then to support D-team members a little bit better,” Andy said.
He explained that he wouldn’t have given up his opportunities for anything. He was feeding his addiction to the big show of European racing, making decent money, and having the time of his life! What else could he need or want?
So, the big question is, do all the stars need to align? Do you need to have the right opportunities present themselves at just the right time? Maybe! But it’s important to note that this right moment appears differently for everyone! What is more impactful, is the way you respond to the opportunities presented to you.
U.S. Ski Team coach Matt Whitcomb pointing us in the right direction during a crust cruise at the Snow Farm in New Zealand. (Photo: Julia Kern)
“There are a lot of options these days,” said U.S. Ski Team coach Matt Whitcomb, “but those who become exceptional are the ones who actually pick something from the list, and they run like hell with it.”
You don’t need to do exactly what your teammate did, or what an Olympic medalist did.
“Create your own path, get vulnerable,” Whitcomb advised. “Most people just run down America’s path of mediocrity, when they could instead be cutting their own unique route.”
Every skier can take a different road. Maybe that road is pin-straight without a single bump, or maybe that road has curves and hills and potholes. It doesn’t matter what it looks like or how you approach it, as long as you figure out the best scenario for you and what makes you happiest. One way to solve this solution would be to test out every possibility; take a gap year, go to one school, maybe transfer, take another year off — but this is unrealistic and requires far too many resources. I think that the easiest way to find your way is to talk to others that have faced a similar situation — an older sibling, teammate, coach, or friend. Also, remember that you really can’t go wrong. No matter what choice you make you will still face unexpected fears, experience a new lifestyle, and figure out why exactly you still love this crazy sport!
For those of you taking a year off from school, I wish you the best of luck in finding the perfect place where you belong. For those heading back to school, I hope you cherish every moment of it, because it goes by far too quickly. Regardless of which road you choose, own it! Make it your decision and give it your best shot/all you’ve got. If you do that, you can’t go wrong.
“There is no right or wrong decision, do whatever works for you!” — Sophie Caldwell
“You can be the fittest person out there, but if you are not happy and motivated, it will be very hard to ski fast.” — Julia Kern
“My only regret in my skiing career is that I was not mentally prepared to win a medal at my first Olympics as a 22 year old…. I thought I had a chance of winning a medal but I didn’t actually BELIEVE I could do it. So above anything else I want young skiers who are graduating from high school to know that four years is not a long time and you can find yourself at the start line of the Olympics before you know it.” — Andy Newell
“I don’t think there’s one model that fits every person. It’s also important to remember that it’s not forever!” — Jessie Diggins
“The opportunities will present themselves when the the time is right!” — Ida Sargent
“If you want to be exceptional, don’t be afraid of being an exception.” — Matt Whitcomb
Alayna Sonnesyn with one of her former UVM coaches Perry Thomas at the 2018 App Gap Challenge Rollerski Race in Vermont this summer. (Courtesy photo)
2018 U.S. Ski Team camp at the Snow Farm in New Zealand, with author Alayna Sonnesyn (teal jacket) in the middle of the group shot. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
The following was written by Alayna Sonnesyn, a new member of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team who graduated from the University of Vermont (UVM) this past spring.
Originally from Plymouth, Minnesota, Sonnesyn, 22, raced on the UVM Ski Team for four years and qualified for four NCAA Skiing Championships teams. She placed second and third in two races at 2017 NCAA Championships, and in her senior season, won the first five Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA) races and went on to reach the podium in 10 out of 11 EISA races. Sonnesyn expressed an interest in exploring the dilemma many of the nation’s top skiing talents face out of high school: whether to attend college or get an early jump on a pro-racing career. She plans to post this two-part series on her blog as well.
***
For the first time in 17 years I will not be going back to school this fall. Saying that out loud is more daunting than I had anticipated. For the most part, the classmates that I graduated with can say that they are “going to grad school,” “starting a new job,” or “taking a year off to travel,” but I still don’t know where I lie. I am not taking any classes this year, I am not working anywhere consistently, and I am doing more than just traveling to explore, I’m traveling to race!
I am wrapping up a three-week training camp in New Zealand with the SMS, Craftsbury, and US Ski Team. When I walked through customs I had to write down my reason for visiting New Zealand: Was I a student? Was I visiting a family or friend? Was I working? What was my job? In the rush of the moment and due to habit, I wrote that I was still a student and continued on my way. I later had a few reflections; I still haven’t reached the point yet where I can say I have a job. I don’t have a salary and there are no company benefits. Yet, I work 24/7 toward my job — my job is ski racing. But why is this so hard for me to admit to myself? Is it because, for my entire life, I’ve been a student? What if I hadn’t taken this route? How do others make this decision?
National Training Group (NTG), summer 2013, in Park City, Utah.
Racing throughout high school, I was given a number of perspectives about picking skiing versus school. My friends were all preparing to go to college and I always assumed I would go to college, too. My parents and older sister went to school, why wouldn’t I go as well? But then I thought about skiing. I never had the most outstanding results in high school (never qualified to race internationally), but I was good enough to qualify for regional and national level camps like REG, NEG and NTG. I traveled to these camps and trained with other high-level athletes, getting more and more motivated by each skier or coach that I met. Then the thought came to me… what if I didn’t go to college? I could focus on training, make those vital steps toward international racing, and continue along the “pipeline” that so many Olympians had followed. Maybe I would make bigger jumps and improve my skiing exponentially? I was entering the unknown and I was unsure how to pick the right choice for me. Looking back on this four years later, I realize that I was far from alone in this predicament.
I have since had the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of skiers and competitors and have learned so much that I wish I knew in high school. It’s OK to be confused. It’s OK to make your own path. Every athlete is in a different situation, comes from diverse athletic and academic backgrounds, and has various goals that they hope to achieve post-high school.
“I’ve always believed that the most important thing to remember when discussing the decision to go to school or not (or when to go to school) is that is it a completely individual decision and the right decision for one person might not be the right decision for the next.” — Sophie Caldwell
Personally, I finally decided that taking a gap year might be too big of a jump for me. I wasn’t ready to focus on skiing and I had a lot of goals for myself academically. I decided to attend the University of Vermont and upon reflection, can admit that this was one of the best decisions of my life. Similarly, SMS teammate, Kelsey Phinney, went from high school in Boulder, Colorado, directly to Middlebury College.
“The reason I chose Middlebury College was simple: I went to visit and I was ready to unpack and stay for good. I loved the people, the area, the ski team, and the classes I sat in on.” — Kelsey Phinney
Carnival love, with Kelsey Phinney (top) and Katie Feldman.
Kelsey and I both fell in love with our schools from the start and knew we were where we belonged. We took these college experiences as learning opportunities; maybe we wouldn’t have been ready to jump right into the professional circuit but we both determined this was the right path for us.
“I loved the experiences I had on the Carnival circuit. Both good and bad times taught me a lot about life and skiing, and I felt like the balance of school and sport made me better at both,” Kelsey reflects.
Similarly, Sophie Caldwell had her mind made up without the need to hesitate over a gap year or jumping into full-time skiing.
“I chose to go to college right out of high school, and it was something I had always known I wanted to do. I knew there was a good chance I wanted to ski professionally at some point in my life, but when I was 18, I wasn’t ready to 100% commit to skiing,” Sophie, a Dartmouth graduate, explains.
With academic goals in mind and the confidence to pursue skiing in the long run, sometimes there’s no need to question it. Going directly to college might challenge you more than you think and it might make you question what you’re doing. The balance of school and skiing is great, but it’s TOUGH! At least you worked through those challenges and figured out where you want to be though.
“I definitely had my ups and downs throughout college and at times I considered not pursuing skiing after college, but by the time I entered my senior spring, I knew I wanted to give skiing professionally a shot and knew it was because it was what I wanted to do, not what I had to do,” Sophie notes.
Over the course of four years, we were able to say goodbye to our homes, grow into adults and develop as skiers, allowing a much smoother transition into the professional racing circuit post-college. This decision to go right to college made sense for Kelsey, Sophie and me — it was simple; but I recognize that this choice isn’t as straightforward for everyone.
***
“I loved my time at Burke and wasn’t quite ready to leave. I also didn’t know where I wanted to go to college as part of me wanted to go out west while part of me wanted to stay closer to home.” — Ida Sargent
The conflict of picking a school, a place we are willing to spend at least four years of our lives at, can be intimidating to anyone. Taking a year off to think and explore what motivates you once the structure of school is taken out of the picture can be extremely vital to one’s skiing longevity. Other times, this year off can be done to test out what skiing professionally is actually like.
“I wanted to test out whether I could do only professional skiing.” — Katharine Ogden
A feat that might sound easy to accomplish — ski, eat, sleep, repeat — can’t be THAT hard! But what happens when you suddenly put all of your time and energy into one goal?
“Ironically, my gap year did not turn out even close to how I had planned or imagined!” reflects Julia Kern.
Julia Kern with swollen legs after surgery, requiring A LOT of physical therapy during the summer.
After facing an early summer surgery for compartment syndrome and then an untimely back injury in the fall, Julia notes that her gap year was extremely tough with plenty of lows and setbacks.
Ida Sargent offers, “My PG year was a bit of a disappointment as I wasn’t as happy as I was expecting and I also didn’t feel like I made as big of a jump with my results as I had hoped.”
“I think in hindsight it was a good philosophy but I think I approached it wrong. I didn’t do a good job securing other things to do besides training and was thus pretty bored, which led to me putting a lot of stress on skiing and racing,” says Katharine Ogden.
Maybe taking a gap year isn’t as easy as it sounds? Coming face-to-face with this type of ski-focused intensity as an 18 year old can be challenging.
“It showed me how much I really wanted to go to college,” offers Katharine.
It can also be validating, as it can prove to oneself where they really belong at that point in their life.
“It made me realize that I wasn’t ready to ski full time and I still needed balance in my life,” reflects Ida.
What might be the most beneficial aspect of taking a gap year are the lessons you learn throughout. How to deal with the pressure, free time, potential obstacles, and how to respond when you’re suddenly put in an unfamiliar situation.
“My gap year turned out to be far from ideal from a training/fitness standpoint, but I became very in tune with my body, learned how my body responds to training, became mentally tougher, and learned that I love the skiing lifestyle (even if it is tough sometimes) and that I want to ski at the highest level possible,” says Julia.
Some things you just can’t learn in a classroom.
Julia Kern (on table) still smiling!Julia Kern taking the time to think about something other than skiing during her gap year. (Photo: Julia Kern) How to pass the time away, when you have so much of it. (Photo: Julia Kern)
After taking a gap year to figure out what skiing was like full-time; Ida, Katharine, and Julia attended Dartmouth College (via various routes):
Ida states, “I started by going to school full time and I raced for Dartmouth for three years and then made the National team so I took my senior winter off to race for the USST and then I went back for a spring term my fifth year.”
“One year in [as a traditional student], I am very happy at Dartmouth and racing the collegiate circuit last year reignited my love for the sport,” adds Katharine.
While Julia contributes, “I chose Dartmouth because I wasn’t sure what skiing and school balance I wanted to have, but I did know that I wanted to be able to take terms off to race internationally.”
Regardless of which Dartmouth plan they followed, all three skiers seem to have enjoyed the choices they made. Whether taking a gap year is or isn’t part of your plan, the most important takeaway is that you should TAKE SOMETHING AWAY! Learn something new about yourself, about skiing, or about classes you want to study.
So what about other options for pursuing a ski career? Jessie Diggins and Andy Newell both chose to skip college and go straight into skiing. Stay tuned for my next post when I’ll include input from both of them as well as what U.S. Ski Team coach Matt Whitcomb has to say on this topic.
Gus Kaeding coaching at 2012 World Juniors in Erzurum, Turkey.
The newest hire to the U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaching ranks is 34-year-old Gus Kaeding. Kaeding is a newly minted MBA as of 2017 and is fresh off a gig with the U.S. Olympic Committee based out of Colorado Springs. Kaeding was a junior skier at the Stratton Mountain School (SMS), skied collegiately at Northern Michigan University, and coached at Central Cross Country and went on to become head coach of the SMST2 Team prior to studying for his master’s.
Although a core New Englander, Kaeding has settled in Park City, Utah, home of U.S. Ski and Snowboard, where he’ll wear two hats.
“I have two jobs and work in two different departments,” Kaeding said on the phone on June 20. “One part is with the cross-country ski team, and it is because we have increased demand in our development ranks. … The second part of my job is essentially a sport-science data role and it is across the entire U.S. Ski and Snowboard organization. Eventually, that role will be to implement a data management program to help organize athlete data — whether it be race data, testing data, or simply just contact data. And it involves setting up the structures to do that which is something that sounds easier than it actually is.”
Coach Gus Kaeding (c) serving as starter during a team-sprint workout at that U.S. Ski Team women’s camp last month in Lake Placid, N.Y.
This season’s development team has expanded from four to seven athletes. With the near doubling in size of the D-team, Kaeding was brought on as part of the USST’s decision to place more resources in support of its younger skiers. The A and B teams saw the departure of Kikkan Randall (retired), Liz Stephen (retired), and Andy Newell (non-World Cup race focus), and Rosie Brennan. Kevin Bolger was the only new addition.
National governing bodies often prioritize after an Olympic quadrennial. Adding Kaeding to help evolve the robust foundation laid down by longtime development coach Bryan Fish is nothing seismic.
“[Kaeding] has been hired as a D-team coach specifically to help nurture and shepherd this group of athletes through the next few years of their development,” USST Head Coach Chris Grover told FasterSkier this spring. Kaeding will report directly to Grover as it relates to his D-team cross-country coaching.
In terms of his primary function with the D-team, Kaeding described it as meeting the specific needs of the seven D-team athletes. That could entail anything from on-the-ground coaching and assistance during camps to helping facilitate better communication between an athlete’s primary coach and the national team.
“In the short term, these athletes have goals,” Kaeding said. “And I am relatively comfortable saying my goal is to help them achieve their goals. Ultimately, the goal is to convert these athletes to the B and the A team.”
Ben Ogden racing to third in a 10 k classic FIS race last December in Craftsbury, Vermont. (Photo: Julia Kern/Ben Ogden Instagram)
New to the D-team is Ben Ogden, and he’s a good example of how Kaeding sees his job as a facilitator between the many coaches involved with a specific skier. The 18-year-old Ogden trained with the USST this spring in Bend, Oregon. He then settled at home in Vermont to train with SMST2 coach Patrick O’Brien. He’ll matriculate this fall as a freshman at the University of Vermont and train with coach Patrick Weaver.
“The most important aspect with my job with Ben is to be very proactive with communication,” Kaeding said. “I think in the past, and I have been on the other side of the coin, too. when I was coaching at Stratton and we had development team athletes, one of the areas I struggled with when trying to talk to the U.S. Ski Team was communication. Basically, it was not really anyone’s job, whether I had Skyler Davis or Paddy Caldwell. They all had a different person to go to, and it was different from camp to camp and race to race. So it got a little hard. Things fell through the cracks. My first and foremost job is to not let things fall through the cracks.”
Shepherding D-team athletes is one core responsibility for Kaeding. When in Park City at the USST Center of Excellence, Kaeding will be spearheading a project that will begin collecting data on athletes and their performance. Further along, he’ll help create an interface to manage and communicate that information.
He explained that U.S. Ski & Snowboard is in its nascent phase of proprietary data collection and management.
“The best practice is to seek out a question that you want to answer and then decide what data you need to answer that question,” Kaeding said of how he is approaching the project. “And we are so in the infancy of this process we don’t even know what question we are trying to answer right now.”
He explained that their data collection will most likely involve a mix of athlete-specific GPS and heart-rate information. In the near term, Kaeding foresees the low-hanging fruit of data management as something smaller scale than implementing a program-wide U.S. Ski & Snowboard data collection and analyses initiative.
“Right now, there are much easier wins,” he said. “So like this data-management system, it sounds sexy, but sometimes the biggest wins are just the small things. Like, you can have a dashboard for a particular athlete. This is like a notepad where all the athletes, coaches, sport psychologist, maybe they have a strength trainer — and they can see maybe this athlete had a bad race two days ago. Should that affect how they make their strength plan because they are probably 2000 miles away and may be unable to talk to their coach? Or if it’s a sport psych, maybe they should be addressing a particular issue with this athlete that the coaches brought up.”
On the job since May, Kaeding has begun to collect and organize past training logs from D-team athletes. Part of his work has been comparing that data with training information from Norway’s development team. As part of his outreach, Kaeding provided a summary of the USST D-team men’s training hours and intensity ranges from ages 15-18. The bottom row of Table 1 includes data (averaged) from Norway’s development team.
(While he does not have complete data from the USST D-team women yet, he explained that their total hours would be slightly lower. Further, it is unclear if the Norwegian data is an aggregate of both men and women. Kaeding also clarified L5 training. “Everyone records Level 5 slightly differently, so take that column with a grain of salt.”)
Table 1: Average training hours for USST D-team male athletes broken down by age, compared to an average for Norway’s D-team skiers. (Courtesy: Gus Kaeding/USST)
“USA skiers are doing slightly less L1, but replacing it with L2,” Kaeding noted in an email about Table 1’s data. “We are doing more strength and less L4 training. As you can see from the above hours breakdown, [Norway] is actually doing almost twice the L4 training on average.”
The second table from Kaeding compares Norway’s and the USA’s D-team (men only) training by percent of average total time, ages 15-18, in specific training zones.
Table 2: Percent breakdown of total time in specific training zones for USST D-team and Norwegian D-team. (Courtesy: Gus Kaeding/USST)
Kaeding related that back when he first learned Norwegian juniors were training relatively high hours, it came as a surprise.
“I was pretty shocked at how much their juniors were training, frankly,” Kaeding said. “I think that is just what it takes there. I mean, they see the athletes that are having success on the World Cup level and they are training a lot and it is a competitive field there, and so they are working hard at a young age. Basically the message is, you can be as talented as you want but even the most talented athletes are working hard.”
He added that skier retention is a USST priority. One aspect of retention, according to Kaeding, is ensuring that that training is fun. Table 1, for example, does not show the multi-sport approach many D-team athletes have taken while acquiring their training hours.
“Some of these guys like to ride bikes a lot,” Kaeding said. “So at a young age, they are doing bike races in the summer. They are doing swimming races. They are not just going out and cranking on rollerskis eight days a week and just kind of getting bored out there. They are mixing it up. Doing whatever they are interested in. But they are all active people and are working hard doing what they like to do, and that is what jumped out to me.”
And although the data show USST D-team athletes are putting in the hard work, Kaeding will emphasize age-appropriate fun as part of the development of high performing juniors.
“The younger athletes have a little bit more freedom,” he said. “That’s where having two people on the development staff allows us to tailor the training more specifically to their needs. I am hoping to have a little bit more fun and do some of the activities that maybe aren’t as appropriate for older skiers as the winter draws near. So that is a discussion we are having now, and we will probably look at more closely next year.”
Erika Flowers (in red) racing at 2017 SuperTour Finals in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she posted a best result of third in the skate sprint. In the last six years, Flowers has reached the SuperTour podium 16 times and finished the 2017/2018 season fourth overall. (Photo: Clyde Hewitt)
It wasn’t until recently that Erika Flowers learned the meaning of her middle name. At the time of her birth, her father had been cutting around Montana’s mountain slopes on Elan alpine skis. Though the brand’s company is based out of Slovenia, the definition of élan, according to Webster’s dictionary, is a vigorous spirit or enthusiasm.
Whether Flower’s father, Pat, had researched the word’s meaning or whether the name had simply struck him, the skis were his muse. Erika became Erika Élan.
“He just happened to be skiing on that brand, and I think he liked the sound of it,” Flowers said during a recent phone interview from her hometown of Bozeman, Montana. “So he and my mom named me Erika Élan Flowers.”
For anyone familiar with Flowers, long, stick-straight, blond hair often bouncing around in a high ponytail and glacial blue eyes are idiosyncratic to the 28 year old. So is an intense verve, or élan.
“I actually never knew it had any meaning (beyond just being a ski brand) until this winter when I randomly came across it in an article and looked up the definition,” Flowers wrote in an email. “That said, I think it describes how I try to approach life in general.”
***
While many nordic skiers dream about racing against the all-stars of Norway, Sweden and other powerhouse ski nations, not everyone gets the chance to do so year after year.
A former University of Utah skier, Kevin Bolger, now 25, managed to make his way onto the international ski scene this past March, sprinting to 11th place in his debut World Cup race in Lahti, Finland. Two weekends later, Bolger claimed another top 30 at the World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden.
His breakthrough came after less than a year of training with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team; Bolger graduated from Utah in May of 2017.
The timing was impeccable. Just as Bolger was working toward a spot at the World Cup level, two U.S. veterans stepped away from the circuit. Flowers’s husband, Andy Newell announced this spring that he would pursue new career adventures and train apart from the U.S. Ski Team (USST), and Noah Hoffman officially retired from ski racing in March.
By the end of May, Bolger had earned a nomination to the USST B-Team.
In an email to FasterSkier this spring, Bolger himself concluded that his transition to World Cup racing “couldn’t have been written any better.”
Making it onto the women’s World Cup circuit as an American, at least for the past six years, has been more complicated. It’s even harder to make the USST. Since 2010, a number of strong names — like Sadie Bjornsen, Jessie Diggins, Ida Sargent, and Sophie Caldwell — have been added to the team, while few women have left.
In short, a roster of seven women (not including the development team) has been fairly standard to the USST for close to a decade.
Outside the national team, the U.S. domestic women’s field also witnessed a surge in talent and depth over the last six years. From 2012 to 2018 alone, at least 10 non-national-team women worked their way to the World Cup race scene, including Caitlin Patterson, Kaitlynn Miller and Liz Guiney of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, Chelsea Holmes, Becca Rorabaugh and Rosie Frankowski of Alaska Pacific University, Caitlin Gregg of Team Gregg (when she wasn’t on the national team in 2015), Jennie Bender of the Bridger Ski Foundation, and Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School.
Any skier pushing to make a break would have a number of strong names to work around. But for Flowers, racing World Cups was a long-term goal, as was making skiing a sustainable profession for herself. She could spend hours sifting over rosters and names, but the only way to confirm anything was to try it out for herself.
American Erika Flowers (r) hugs her Stratton teammate Sophie Caldwell following the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle race at the 2017 World Cup Finals in Quebec City (Photo: Gretchen Powers)
After graduating from Dartmouth in 2012, Flowers regularly finished in the top 10 of the overall SuperTour standings. She, too, earned a few World Cup starts. Flowers completed in all three races at 2017 World Cup Finals in Québec City, Québec, with a best result of 48th in the skate sprint.
In the end-of-year SuperTour standings, her ranking also saw a steep jump. From 2013 to 2014, she went from 32nd to fifth overall and was fifth again in 2015. The next season, she finished seventh overall and was fifth again in 2017. She capped off this season with her best finish to date, earning fourth.
Still, the sought-after World Cup starts remained elusive. As she developed, the USST also gained steam. Any progression she made also seemed to be matched by the cohort of American skiers she had be racing against since her departure from Dartmouth.
So why did she, summer after summer, push through intervals on rollerskis? Why spend each winter traveling to competitions, as Flowers put it, “living out of a bag”? Why did she continue to ski race year after year?
***
Flowers was fiveyears old when she first learned that her mother had breast cancer. Four years after her mother’s diagnosis, the family moved from Missoula to Bozeman. There, Flowers and her younger sister, Natalie, joined the Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) cross-country youth program.
The BSF community provided a niche for the Flowers siblings. The cancer treatments their mother was receiving also showed promise. Following her diagnosis and treatments in 1995, Hedvig Rappe-Flowers, Erika’s mom, was cancer-free for more than five years, according to an article by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
But the cancer returned. Rappe-Flowers, a native of Sweden, encouraged her daughters to keep skiing. Do what made them happy. Both of them did.
Erika Flowers during the early stages of her nordic career. “It was the first time I’d ever had my photo taken by any sort of professional and I remember just having no idea what I was doing but its become one of my favorite photos if only because it’s very raw and unedited and from a time when I was just starting to gain some real confidence both in who I was as a person and an athlete,” Flower wrote. (Photo: Chris Milliman)
“My mom passed away from breast cancer when I was 17 which gave me a strong appreciation for how precious and valuable each day is and I know that I don’t want to waste one of them,” Flowers wrote in an email. “I think that’s another reason I probably decided to ski race for as long as I did — it was my first love and for all I know I could find out I have breast cancer tomorrow.
“What I do know is that I spent the last 16 years of my life doing something I absolutely loved!” she continued. “I think that has been on my mind a lot these days, especially given Kikkan’s recent diagnosis.”
“Kikkan’s a tough cookie though and I have no doubt she will tackle cancer the same way she has her many other challenges in skiing and in life — with equal parts fierce tenacity, bravery and grace,” Flowers added.
While joining Randall in skiing’s elite racing ranks was certainly a goal, it wasn’t the only reason Flowers skied. Nor did she ski in her mother’s name — though Hedvig did instill in her daughters an enthusiasm for nordic sport and a steely resolve in all that they chose to do.
“At her memorial service, one of the songs we played was ‘Hard Headed Woman’ — that really kind of describes her,” Flowers said. “She wouldn’t take no from anyone and believed so strongly in the idea that you could do anything you set your mind to.”
The mercurial sport of cross-country ski racing had taken its hold. And Flowers was not about to let go.
Racing brought numerous challenges. Days when her body felt great, but the wax was too slow. Times when foul weather hit midway through a competition, slowing the course.
“Those variables can be extremely frustrating when they don’t go your way,” Flowers wrote.
Frustrating, but simultaneously motivating, in its own way.
“When everything does come together, it’s the most exhilarating and addicting feeling in the world!” she noted. “I think I always thrived on the challenge of it all.”
Four years ago, Flowers even gave biathlon a shot, traveling to Lake Placid, N.Y., for a US Biathlon talent camp. While she showed promise, Flowers ultimately stuck with cross-country.
Erika Flowers (l) and Andy Newell at the 2017 World Cup Finals in Quebec City. (Photo: Gretchen Powers)
Skiing had deeper roots than racing and results for Flowers. It was a family affair (she credits her mother with having taught her how to skate ski). It was how she met most of her closest friends. It was also how she met her husband, Newell, whom she married last year.
“The people, the fact that every day my job is to go outside and work on getting better at something I love, the travel, and the challenge and unpredictability of professional sport,” Flowers wrote of what had kept her ski racing into her late twenties. “Lastly the support of countless friends, sponsors and supporters is one of the most important things that kept me involved for so long. Had I not had that level of support I would not have been able to race for as long as I did or reach the levels of success I did.”
At the root of Erika’s lifelong élan was, and still is, skiing.
***
About a year and a half shy of her 30th birthday, Flowers is back where it all started. She and her husband and former Stratton Mountain School (SMS) teammate, Newell, packed up a U-Haul this spring and drove from Vermont to Bozeman. Back in her hometown, Flowers competed in the 20-mile Ed Anacker Bridger Ridge Run in June. She still trains, most often with Newell, and unabashedly states that yes, she still rollerskis.
Since leaving Stratton, she does not currently have a formative training plan or program. Prior to moving, Flowers explored every “decision matrix possible” and spoke with numerous athletes and non-athletes alike about what she should do next. In the end, taking a step back from skiing seemed best.
Team photo of last season’s Stratton Mountain School T2 Team: (back row, right to left) Erika Flowers, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, and Annie Hart. (Front row, r to l) Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, head coach Pat O’Brien, Ben Saxton, and Paddy Caldwell. (Photo: Reese Brown)
“It wasn’t that I was sick of the lifestyle or anything like that,” Flowers explained. “I think it was more I’ve been doing it for long enough to recognize that my improvement curve is not what it needs to be in order to ultimately be able to make skiing into something that’s sustainable; something that can help me achieve some of the other goals I have in life, whether that’s getting a house or sitting on the board of a company.
“I think that’s also what made it so hard,” she continued. “In some ways it’s walking away from something I absolutely love to start at the bottom of another passion.”
Skiing has opened up a few other professional outlets for Flowers to pursue. She unofficially began social-media work for the National Nordic Foundation and USST this spring. She also is an athlete ambassador for the Women’s Sports Foundation. Her ties to nordic skiing becoming ever more intricate.
“Some people want to go all in for X number of years and retire and never look at a pair of rollerskis or race skis again,” Flowers reflected. “But to me, the word ‘retire’ sounds like something reserved for people in their late 60s, early 70s … maybe that’s why I haven’t used that word, it just doesn’t fit.
“I think for me, it’s more deciding to take a step back from pursuing racing full time and looking at opportunities to pursue something else more fully,” she said.
The change of pace is in no way preventing her from getting outside. With Newell still planning on ski racing, just not full time on the World Cup, she’s still plenty invested in the nordic world.
“From my end I just try to be supportive no matter what,” Newell said on the phone. “I think she’s been training so much and so well … she can take this year and try something new, even take a few months and try something new, and it would still be be pretty easy for her to jump into some races and make a comeback. Because I can tell you from my perspective, as her husband and as somebody that trains with her on a regular basis, she’s not slowing down even though she has other goals outside of skiing.”
Former Stratton Mountain School teammates, now husband and wife, Andy Newell and Erika Flowers during a rollerski training session. (Photo: Reese Brown)
On Thursday, U.S. Ski & Snowboard released its roster for its 2018/2019 national cross-country team nominations, and the list includes five returning A-team members (four women and one man), an all-male B-team, and seven athletes on the D (development) team.
Kevin Bolger (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) during his debut World Cup race weekend in Lahti, Finland, last March. There, he placed 11th in the freestyle sprint and 54th in the 15 k classic. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Simi Hamilton leads the men’s team as its lone A-team member, while Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, and Ida Sargent are all back on the A-team. The B-team includes three returners — Erik Bjornsen, Paddy Caldwell and Scott Patterson — as well as 25-year-old rookie Kevin Bolger, out of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF), who was named to the team after some breakthrough World Cup results last season.
All four of last year’s D-team were renominated, namely 2018 NCAA champions Katharine Ogden (who swept both races at the collegiate championships) and Ian Torchia, Julia Kern and Hannah Halvorsen. Joining them are three athletes who broke through at 2018 Junior World Championships: Hailey Swirbul, Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher.
Seven of the 16 nominees train with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) in Vermont. Six others are based out of Anchorage, Alaska; five train with Alaska Pacific University (APU) while the 17-year-old Schumacher hails from the Alaska Winter Stars. The Craftsbury Green Racing Project has one athlete on the team (Sargent), as does SVSEF (Bolger). Torchia is entering his senior season at Northern Michigan University.
Here’s the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team’s nomination list. The team will be officially named this fall.
U.S. Ski Team2018-19 Cross Country Nominations (Hometown; Club; Birthdate)
A TEAM Men
Simi Hamilton (Aspen, Colo.; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 5/14/87)
Women
Sadie Bjornsen (Winthrop, Wash.; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 11/21/89)
Sophie Caldwell (Peru, Vt.; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 3/22/90)
Jessie Diggins (Afton, Minn.; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 8/26/91)
Ida Sargent (Orleans, Vt.; Craftsbury Green Racing Project; 1/25/88)
B TEAM Men
Erik Bjornsen (Winthrop, Wash.; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 7/14/91)
Kevin Bolger (Minocqua, Wisc.; Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation; 4/11/93)
Patrick Caldwell (Lyme, N.H.; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 2/18/94)
Scott Patterson (Anchorage, Alaska; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 1/28/92)
D TEAM Men
Ben Ogden (Landgrove, Vt.; Stratton Mountain School; 2/13/00)
Gus Schumacher (Anchorage, Alaska; Alaska Winter Stars; 7/25/00)
Ian Torchia (Rochester, Minn.; Northern Michigan University; 3/8/96)
Women
Hannah Halvorsen (Truckee, Calif.; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 2/19/98)
Julia Kern (Waltham, Mass.; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 9/12/97)
Katharine Ogden (Landgrove, Vt.; Stratton Mountain School; 11/17/97)
Hailey Swirbul (Aspen, Colo.; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 7/10/98)
Andy Newell (c) of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Stratton Mountain School T2 Team after winning the men’s classic sprint at 2018 SuperTour Finals on March 24 in Craftsbury, Vt. His Stratton teammate Ben Saxton (l) placed second and Erik Bjornsen (r), of the USST and Alaska Pacific University, placed third. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
When Andy Newell took to social media about a week and a half ago to announce that he was parting ways with the U.S. Ski Team (USST) after 16 years, some people might have assumed that he was leaving the sport. They would be wrong.
Newell, a 34-year-old Shaftsbury, Vermont, native and USST A-team member for the last 12 seasons, was quick to clarify that he’s not retiring from racing. After four Olympics and 16 years on the team, he’s just ready to be his own boss and set his own schedule.
“I guess in the back of my mind I always knew once the [2018] Olympics were over I would most definitely take a step back from being a full-time international ski racer and definitely take a step back from being a U.S. Ski Team national-team racer,” Newell said in a phone interview earlier this week. “Because that way, it allows me much more flexibility with my schedule even in the summer as far as training camps go and obviously a ton more flexibility in the winter as far as how much time I need to spend away from home racing World Cups.”
American Andy Newell racing the men’s 1.5 k freestyle-sprint qualifier at Stage 1 of the 2017/2018 Tour de Ski on Dec. 30 in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. He qualified 20th and went on to finish 19th on the day. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Newell spent all of last season — from Oct. 29 until mid-March — on the World Cup circuit in Europe (except for when he was at the Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, for the month of February). He rarely saw his wife, Erika Flowers, whom he married last June. The two arranged quick trips to see each other when they could, but as full-time ski racers on different circuits, it was a challenge.
“Five, six, seven, or ten years ago, I was making many of these decisions as an individual, and now that I’m married, I definitely have a lot more to consider than just myself when I make decisions when it comes to planning and scheduling,” Newell said.
While he was hesitant to elaborate on his plans moving forward, Newell emphasized that he’ll continue to race in the near future.
“Right now, I guess my plan would be to get back to a simpler schedule where I am still training at a high level but not focused really at all on World Cup racing,” he said. “So I might target a few races that I’ve always really wanted to do, for example some of the Ski Classics possibly over in Europe like the [Norwegian] Birkebeiner, possibly the American Birkebeiner. I think there’s so many great ski experiences that we have out there other than racing World Cups every weekend.”
And at this point, he’s not completely ruling out another run at World Championships.
“If I’m feeling like a complete champion by doing some of these different races, then you might see me trying to take a stab at something like World Championships,” Newell said. “But I’m not really putting any pressure or expectations on that, I’m more just looking to get back to a more simple training and racing routine where I can come up with my own schedule and plans and just remember what it’s like to really enjoy ski racing and doing the ski races that I want to do.”
Growing Up on the Ski Team
Andy Newell with some hardware after placing fourth in the season-long Sprint World Cup for the 2009/2010 season. (Photo: Kikkan Randall)
Newell first landed a spot on the U.S. Ski Team as a high-school senior at the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) in Stratton, Vermont. He was initially selected to the development team, which came with invitations to national-team training camps — like the present-day development “D” team — as well as summer housing at the USST base in Park City, Utah.
That season, in 2002/2003, Newell raced at World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy, and nearly qualified for the heats in the skate sprint (placing 31st). Just 19 years old at the time, he also competed at Junior World Championships in Sollefteå, Sweden, where he placed second in the qualifier and seventh overall in the freestyle sprint.
He competed in his first World Cup in 2004 and made the leap to the USST A-team in 2005. Newell then began his 12-season streak on the A-team, which entailed the team’s highest level of financial support. He reached the World Cup podium three times as an individual — first in 2006 in Changchun, China, where he placed third in a freestyle sprint. In doing so, Newell became the first American to medal in a World Cup race since Bill Koch did the same 23 years prior.
While Koch was a distance racer — like every international nordic racer of his era — Newell earned his chops as a sprinter and came onto the World Cup scene when short-distance sprint races were in full swing (the format was introduced at 1999 World Championships and 2002 Winter Olympics).
“I think back on those years, and they were so cool,” Newell said of his early days on the team. “To be, like, 20 years old and beginning to race World Cups. … I remember in ’05, I got a top 15 in a World Cup, and that was the first time that had happened for the U.S. in the last however many years, and because of things like that, every weekend something new and exciting was happening.
“I started doing better in some of the sprints and winning the qualification and getting a top 10 here, and the next year I was on the podium after that in ’06,” he continued. “And so it was a very quick trajectory to becoming one of the best sprinters in the world at that time.”
He raced at eight World Championships with his best result coming in 2007 in Sapporo, Japan, where he placed fifth in a classic sprint.
“I won the qualification in the sprint and ended up finishing fifth, but I remember being pretty disappointed,” Newell reflected. “I thought I totally could’ve been on the podium there.”
Andy Newell racing in late 2009. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
His other two World Cup podiums came when he placed second in a 2008 skate sprint in Lahti, Finland, and third in a 2010 classic sprint in Drammen, Norway. In four Olympics, Newell achieved two individual top 20s in skate sprints (16th in 2006 and 18th in 2014), and ninth in the freestyle team sprint at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.
In PyeongChang this past February, he raced to 37th in the classic sprint and 14th with the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay. Reflecting on those Olympics, Newell said he was personally disappointed with his results, but thrilled to be a part of history with his team.
“I felt like I had put in the time, time and effort and preparation to race better than I did,” he said. “But at the same time, we created such a great, tight unit and team throughout the last four years that for me, it was just so great to be there, to be there on the day that Jessie [Diggins] and Kikkan [Randall] won a gold medal. … Even though I didn’t ski my best, it was still, to me, in a lot of ways a success to be there; it’s been a successful year in that respect.”
‘A Little Bit of a Guinea Pig’
Asked how the sport, specifically sprinting, has changed over the years, he said it’s been gradual but noticeable. Moreover, his ability and willingness to adapt is what has kept him in it this long.
“If you were to look back on a World Cup sprint from 2005, the technique would look a lot different than it does now,” he said. “Many of the courses are the same, some are a little longer now than maybe what you would see back in the early 2000s for sprinting, but I think, in order to be competitive then, and also still competitive now, I’ve had to try to adapt as best as I can, and always be willing to learn new things.
Fifth in the 2012/2013 Sprint World Cup, Andy Newell (r) with women’s Sprint World Cup winner and fellow U.S. Ski Team member Kikkan Randall at 2013 World Cup Finals in Drammen, Norway. (Courtesy photo)
“I think if I would have assumed I was doing everything right or couldn’t improve, then I would have definitely been left behind I think years and years and years ago,” Newell continued. “I think people like Kikkan have done a really good job of that, and something that I’ve really tried to do, too, over the years, is always being willing to learn something new and not really have an ego about your shortcomings as an athlete.”
He explained that a consistent theme of his career was his willingness to venture into unchartered waters when it came to training.
“I’ve been a little bit of a guinea pig for the U.S. Ski Team in a lot of ways,” Newell said with a laugh. “I was probably the first athlete to go over and race an entire World Cup season. They hadn’t done that before we started scoring those kind of World Cup points in the mid-2000s, so it was like, how do we create a training plan that’s going to allow us to be successful at World Championships but also still race an entire World Cup season? So it’s been a great learning process for me and also I think the coaches over the last 20 years.”
Over the last two decades, Newell said he’s mainly worked with Chris Grover, the current U.S. Ski Team head coach, and more recently, USST Assistant Coach Jason Cork.
“Chris Grover wrote my training plans for probably the majority of my career,” Newell explained. “In the last four years or so, I started to work more with Jason Cork and also myself, I do a lot of the writing myself.
“I think I’m someone who likes to be a student of the craft of what I’m working on; I think I’ve always been like that,” he continued. “When a coach tells you to do something, you’re always kind of like, OK, but I would always want to ask why we do a certain workout the way we do and how it builds … I’ve just liked to learn about training principles over the years, and so as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more involved in writing, going over training plans myself, and incorporating ideas and workouts that I want to do. And I’ve done a lot of dumb, crazy stuff over the years, too.”
Andy Newell celebrating the end of the 2012/2013 season with some acrobatics in Falun, Sweden. (Photo: Adam Alexander Johansson, XHC)
Newell may be best remembered for his extreme stunts on ‘X Ski Films’, a filmmaking company he owned and starred in for several years, which included backflips and other airborne tricks on cross-country skis.
He’s also spent the last two decades training out of Stratton with three main coaches: Sverre Caldwell, Gus Kaeding, and most recently, Pat O’Brien, head coach of the SMS T2 Team. Newell met Flowers on that team, and while he won’t be a full-fledged member of SMS T2 this year, Newell said he’s looking to maintain a strong relationships with both Stratton and the U.S. Ski Team.
“In some ways I don’t think it feels like I’m retiring because I’ve kind of always had such a passion for pushing the level of skiing forward in this country,” he said. “And for me as an athlete, that was the best way I could do that, and I know as I transition into different roles in the skiing community, my goal [is] to continue hoping to improve the level of skiing in this country and improve the professionalism of skiing in this country and inspiring the youth skiing movement in this country — all those goals that I had as a ski racer — I will continue to have as a coach or a team leader or whatever my next role is going to be.
“I’d like to work with development as far as helping some younger kids out, so I’m going to try to look for opportunities where I can do that,” he added. “I think it’s kind of a natural transition from athlete to coach in a lot of ways, but I’m still very much going to be an athlete at least in the near future.”
Looking back on his years with the national team, he likened it to the pride one would have in a college or university they graduated from.
“I’m just really proud of my time that I’ve spent with the team and so grateful for all of the opportunities that the U.S. Ski Team has given me over the past two decades,” he said. “It’s probably the same way that people who go to universities and so forth feel about having that kind of pride for their alma mater. I never went to college so it’s like the U.S. Ski Team kind of scooped me up at 16, 17 years old. Everything that has built me up into the kind of person that I am now, that has molded me into my character, everything has more or less has come through the U.S. Ski Team.”
Andy Newell (U.S. Ski Team) after his quarterfinal at a 2015 World Cup freestyle sprint in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: JoJo Baldus)
Is he nervous about going out on his own? Newell said it’s been a long time coming, and he’s more excited than anything.
“The spring’s always a funny time because you’re pretty exhausted from the season,” he said. “In a lot of ways, kind of the last thing you want to think about is skiing, but for me, I’ve always been one of those people that in the springtime gets super excited about all the opportunities. … By April 1, I [would be] already thinking, ‘Oh, what can I do for training next year?’ … and I start throwing around all these crazy ideas. I think that’s one of the things that’s kept me in the sport for so long, is having that excitement around training and preparation.
“I think it will be exciting in a lot of ways to try to be my own boss and do some of the training camps I want to do and partner up and train with some of the athletes that I want to train with,” he said of this spring and summer. “Not that I was ever held back by the U.S. Ski Team, but you definitely had to adhere to a certain schedule so I think it will be exciting to do some different things.”
From Sprints to Marathons?
In late January 2016, shortly before Newell spoke with FasterSkier about mulling retirement, or at least taking a step back from full-time ski racing, he double poled his way to second place in the 42-kilometer Dolomitenlauf classic marathon (part of the FIS Marathon Cup series) in Lienz, Austria. Never one to like being labeled a “sprint specialist”, Newell is looking forward to trying more marathon races like that.
American Andy Newell (r) outsprints Italy’s Mauro Brigadoi, for second place in the 2016 Dolomitenlauf 42 k classic race in Lienz, Austria. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“I have a lot of great friends who train for the Ski Classics [marathon series] and a lot of my Norwegian buddies who I have raced World Cups with over the years have gone that route after their World Cup racing career,” he said. “It’s a cool idea because those races are super fun, there’s great prize money, there’s a lot of excitement over them, and I think it’s really impressive when you see somebody just crush 90 k’s of double poling like they do in the Vasaloppet.
“So I’m definitely inspired by those guys and I, as an athlete, really like classic skiing,” he continued. “I love traditional-style classic skiing and I like double poling, so I think maybe in the future I will try to get into a few of those races, but it’s hard to do those and not be committed 100 percent because those guys that do those, they’re training to crush double pole like nobody’s business, so it’s hard to just show up on a weekend and race one of those races.”
Andy Newell and Erika Flowers, both of the Stratton Mountain T2 Elite Team, after both won the 2014 Jim Bridger Trail Run in Bozeman, Montana.
Aside from the fitness required to double pole an entire marathon, the logistics of these races — many of which start in one town and end in another — is particularly challenging without a full-support crew or team.
“I’d really like to do the [Norwegian] Birkebeiner and I think it will take a few times to be able to consider yourself a threat to the podium in a race like that,” Newell said. “I would be foolish to think I could just jump into a Ski Classics race and crush it, but it’s definitely a goal of mine to maybe do some of those over the next years because I think they’re such legendary, badass ski races.”
In the near future, Newell and Flowers are headed out on a three-week “surf trip” to Australia and Indonesia.
After that, “it’s yet to be seen how everything will fit in,” Newell said in regards to his future plans, both living, training, racing, and otherwise. “There will be more to say later as far as what I have going on for next year as far as what my goals will be.”
Ben Ogden racing to third in a 10 k classic FIS race this past December in Craftsbury, Vermont. (Photo: Julia Kern/Ben Ogden Instagram)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2018 Nordic Junior/U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 17-year-old Ben Ogden, (younger brother of Katharine Ogden) of the Stratton Mountain School, who’s representing the U.S. at his first Junior Worlds.
“My full name is Benjamin Ogden, but you can call me Ben.
I was born and raised in The Grove, and I learned to ski at Wild Wings XC center.
I spent the time between U.S. nationals and Junior/U23 Worlds jibbing with Mathias.
The most important workout I did in the last training year to prepare for this was the Cochran’s Nordic Ski Cross with Asa Chalmers and Conor Munns.
This is my second time in Switzerland and third time racing internationally, and so far it’s been unbelievable.
One difference I’ve noticed between Switzerland and the U.S. is the time zone.
Ben Ogden on the hood of a Ford pickup. (Photo: Carter Hall)
Skiing and racing in the Alps is huge. Usually racing at altitude is a welcomed challenge for me because I always undercook pasta. There are cute mountains around where I live.
One of the things I’m most excited about for Junior/U23 Worlds in Goms is jibbing with some Norwegians.
One race I’m especially targeting there is the skiathlon.
I really hope I can chat/make friends with someone from Jamaica and ask them about the Jamaican bobsled team.
My favorite thing at the breakfast where we are staying is the granola stuff that looks like coco crispies but is not and tastes terrible.
Fondue is strange. The cheese here is sometimes moldy. And the chocolate is delectable.
If I had a totally free day here and didn’t have to worry about race fitness or training, I’d spend it huckin backflips in the Swiss backcountry.
The best way to follow me on social media is on Instagram @ben.0gden.”
Left to right: Tyler Kornfield (APU), Reese Hanneman (APU) and Ben Saxton (SMS) as the top three finishers in the men’s 1.6 k classic sprint final on Monday, the last day of 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — No two races are exactly alike, the saying goes, and there’s a lot of truth to this cliché. But if you step back just a little bit, two race days can start to look awfully similar to one another.
For example, for the second time this week, a Hanneman brother won the sprint qualifier, Reese Hanneman won the final, and Alaska Pacific University (APU) put three athletes in the final and two on the podium on a perfect day for sprinting at Kincaid Park. That was the story on Monday, when Reese Hanneman led teammate Tyler Kornfield and Ben Saxton of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team across the line in the men’s classic sprint at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships. But it was also the case on Friday, when Reese was first and Kornfield was third in the freestyle sprint. It’s been a good week for the Hanneman family.
The classic sprint, the final race of this year’s U.S. nationals, had a slightly more subdued feel than the three that preceded it.
The fields were 50 percent smaller; a combined 160 athletes skied in the qualifier on Monday compared to 337 on Friday, as many juniors opted out of a race whose results did not bear on qualification for international trips and championship teams, and some athletes had already left town. The spectator numbers were smaller, measuring in the dozens rather than the hundreds after three days of packed parking lots and raucous crowds, as the first day of school following winter break sent local students back to the classroom. And the athletes were tired, too, after a full week of racing.
“I was just running on fumes out there, especially after the 30 k yesterday,” fifth-place finisher Kevin Bolger, of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) told FasterSkier after the men’s final.
But cross-country skiers are nothing if not resilient, and so, just after 10 a.m., Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (Bend Endurance Academy) once again led 95 men out onto the qualifying course at 15-second intervals. The temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the display on the stadium scoreboard. The sun had yet to rise and start burning off the morning’s dense fog. It felt cold.
“It’s a very quintessential Alaskan day,” women’s domestic podium bronze medalist Becca Rorabaugh (APU) said after. “It’s like an Alaska temperature, and I feel like a lot of the Alaskan teams have great skis, it’s hard-wax skiing, and it’s just a classic race day. It’s very Alaskan.”
Hanneman Brothers Headline Qualifier
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdsyQTkB945/
APU skiers did very well in the time-trial portion of the morning, which has added, if not exclusive, significance for Olympic qualifying purposes slightly a month before the 2018 Winter Olympics begin in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Reese Hanneman, 28, who grew up in Fairbanks, covered the brand-new, 1.6-kilometer sprint course in 3:21.93, a time good for the fastest qualifying mark on the day. And he did so by nearly three seconds. Next best was his APU teammate and younger brother, Logan Hanneman, 2.84 seconds back. Third was his APU teammate Tyler Kornfield, 4.23 seconds off Reese’s mark.
Alaska Pacific University’s Reese Hanneman during the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint heats on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. Hanneman won the qualifier and eventually, the final for the national title.
In light of the bonus points awarded for U.S. nationals podium performances, FasterSkier’s unofficial calculations put Logan first on the 2018 Olympic Winter Games domestic sprint qualifying list, with 80 points (45 for first at U.S. nationals and 35 for second), and Reese second, with 71 points (45 for first and 26 for third).
In Monday’s classic sprint, Benjamin Ogden (SMS) was fourth in qualifying, 5.12 seconds back. Blackhorse-von Jess was fifth (+5.16), Zak Ketterson of Northern Michigan University sixth (+7.56), Cole Morgan (SVSEF) seventh (+7.61), David Norris of APU eighth (+7.85), Saxton ninth (+7.88), and Bolger tenth (+9.09).
Just like the skate sprint, Brian Gregg, of Central Cross Country (CXC), Loppet Nordic Racing (LNR) and Team Gregg, was the final athlete to make the heats, 16.53 seconds back in 30th.
“I would say all the top sprinting guys, everyone’s focusing kind of on the qualifier, more so than normal,” Reese said on Friday after he had qualified third in the skate sprint. “There’s no margin for error, and you just have to ski it absolutely as fast as possible. It’s definitely different tactics than in the heats… but if you’re fast, you’re fast.”
Reese Hanneman Wins Everything En Route to Final
On Monday, Reese was pretty darn fast. He won his quarterfinal, the first of the day, as well as his semifinal, the first of the day, to make the final with the maximum amount of rest possible. And then, of course, he won the final as well for his fourth national title — and second of 2018 nationals.
In the day’s first quarterfinal, Reese was in the lead by the first turn at 200 meters, followed closely by Bolger. The two of them had a big lead by the time they were coming off Gong Hill. The rest of the field caught up to them somewhat by the finish, but Reese and Bolger still took the top two spots with relative ease.
In the second quarterfinal, U18 skier Ogden led the field into the first turn, with Morgan and Bill Harmeyer, of the University of Vermont, right behind. Ogden was still into the lead coming back into the stadium, but Kris Freeman (Caldwell Sport) had caught up into third. Coming into the finish, Freeman won a four-way lunge for second over Thomas O’Harra (APU), Ben Lustgarten (CGRP), and Harmeyer. O’Harra’s third place in a fast heat was good enough to send him on to the semifinals with the day’s first lucky loser spot.
In the third quarterfinal, Andrew Egger (Colby College) took the lead out of the stadium, but it was Blackhorse-von Jess in the top spot by the time they came back. Blackhorse-von Jess entered the finishing stretch with a 10-meter lead. Ketterson took second, 1.2 seconds back, with Egger another second back by the finish.
From left to right: Logan Hanneman (APU), Like Jager (APU), Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) Nick Michaud (BSF), Scott Patterson (APU), and Jack Hegman (SVSEF) at the start of their quarterfinal in the men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
In the fourth quarterfinal, Saxton and Logan Hanneman left the stadium with the early lead, alongside a quick-starting Luke Jager (APU), one of three U18 skiers who made the senior heats. It was Saxton in the lead coming back to the stadium two minutes later, with Logan leading Jager. Saxton came into the finishing stretch with a healthy lead, but Logan made a powerful move to pull around him and come alongside. Saxton won the heat by 0.37 seconds over Logan. Yesterday’s medalist, Eric Packer (APU), was out in third.
The fifth quarterfinal was heavy on local pride, with three APU skiers and a fourth from University of Alaska Anchorage. Erik Axelsson (Montana State University) led Kornfield and Logan Diekmann (University of Utah) into the first uphill. But two minutes later it was all APU, with Kornfield, David Norris and Forrest Mahlen with a sizeable lead on the rest of the field. Kornfield took the win; Mahlen came around Norris for second, but Norris moved on with the day’s other lucky loser spot. Axelsson was nearly five seconds back of Norris in fourth.
In the first semifinal, Blackhorse-von Jess flashed his ski speed and momentum by dropping into a tuck within the first 200-meter straightaway in the stadium, then still led the field over the top of the first, smaller climb. Ogden and Reese Hanneman were nearby. When they returned to the stadium, Reese had a 20-meter lead over Ogden on the downhill. As happened throughout the day, though, that lead shrank to half that size by the time the skiers entered the finishing stretch. But Reese still had the lead, which he held to the finish. Bolger was second, 0.32 seconds back. Ogden was relegated for obstruction.
The second semifinal featured a predominantly blue color scheme, between four suits from APU and the blue accents on Saxton’s SMS suit. Saxton again led out of the stadium, with Ketterson and Kornfield close by. By the time they came off Gong Hill two minutes later, it was Kornfield in the lead, with Ketterson close behind him. Kornfield led into the finishing stretch, but Ketterson overtook him to place first in the heat.
Behind them, Logan Hanneman made a strong push for third. He closed down Saxton, edging him by 0.04 seconds for third behind Ketterson and Kornfield. In practice, both Logan and Saxton advanced to the final as lucky losers; Norris’s fifth place in this heat would have won the day’s first semifinal by nearly a second.
Reese Hanneman Wins Final, Again
Slightly after 2 p.m., six men lined up in the south end of the Kincaid Stadium. From racer’s left to right, it was Logan, Kornfield, Ketterson, Reese, Bolger, and Saxton in the starting blocks. The sun was out, the temperature was in the high teens, and the course was firm and fast. There was no wind. Conditions were once more basically perfect.
The field had a clean start at the sound of the starter’s pistol, double poling in six separate lanes over the first 200 meters slightly downhill through the stadium. As the racers turned right to go up the first hill it was the Hanneman brothers in the lead, with Kornfield immediately behind them and Ketterson to Kornfield’s right. The pack double poled up the first part of the climb, then strode up and over the top of the hill.
A quick descent followed, then a high-speed, double-pole section leading to the start of the course’s main hill. Reese pushed the pace going up the hill, and not everyone was able to respond.
“I basically started at the base of the big climb,” Reese recalled of the 24-meter vertical gain B-climb in the middle of the sprint course. “I just kind of led in the climb and then just threw down the hammer and just tried to drop everyone going up that thing, and just continue to pound it over the top and take it all the way home.”
The largest climb on the course is “tough for classic skiing,” Bolger explained. “That hill definitely adds a different dynamic to your whole approach to every heat you do. To be able to ski up that hill four times, strong, it’s a challenge.” (Bolger added that he didn’t think anyone would have attempted to double pole a hill of that size, saying that “it’s a challenging enough hill to where it’s going to rule out double poling for anyone.” But just to be sure, race organizers placed a no-double-pole technique zone up the entire length of the climb for both the qualifier and the heats.)
By the time the field descended the waterfall downhill back into the stadium, Reese had a substantial gap over Kornfield, who in turn had a sizeable lead over Ketterson.
Kornfield made up some of this gap going down and around the final 180-degree turn, but Reese still entered the final straightaway with a sizeable lead. Saxton had moved into third, ahead of Ketterson, by the time they reached the 100 meters to go mark.
Reese Hanneman (1) of Alaska Pacific University celebrates his second sprint title of the 2018 L.L.Bean U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships on Monday with a win in the classic sprint final, just ahead of teammate Tyler Kornfield (r) in Anchorage, Alaska. Ben Saxton (SMS Elite Team) rounded out the podium in third. (Photo: Michael Dinneen Photography)
Kornfield barreled down the slight uphill of the finishing straight with grace and fury, closing in on Reese with each extension of his lanky frame. But he was still in the same finishing lane as his APU teammate, getting closer to Reese, but still immediately behind him. With roughly 20 meters to go, Kornfield moved one lane to his left, then lunged as he approached the finish. But Reese’s lead was still too much, and he crossed the finish with his second sprint national title of the week.
Reese’s time for the final was 3:20.62. Kornfield was 0.2 seconds back in second.
Some distance behind them, Saxton crossed the finish line in third, 4.78 seconds back of Reese, with a slight lead over Logan and Bolger. Ketterson finished sixth, 6.83 seconds back, in his second sprint final of the week.
“He is obviously on super-good form right now,” Reese continued. “I just have to know that I have a little more speed than he does. … But he’s really cranking right now. He is skiing great, but it definitely motivated me to know to just drive that thing so hard in the final.”
The second national title in as many races was “an answer to a lot of prayers from this morning and in the heats,” Reese said. “I just feel really lucky and stoked that I could put it together and be in such good form right now in January. It was a great day, an amazing day.”
Tyler Kornfield leads his APU teammate Forrest Mahlen in the men’s 1..6 k classic sprint on Monday at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
Although Kornfield was second today, he “probably got the all-around performance of the week for the men,” Reese said of his teammate. Kornfield reached the podium in every race this week save the opening 15 k freestyle individual start, where he was 14th.
Kornfield’s race series was “a dream come true a little bit,” Kornfield told FasterSkier, “a little unexpected, but I knew I had it in me. The start of the season didn’t go as planned, I got sick for a month before it started, I also sprained my wrist for another month and so I was pretty frustrated with the lack of performances, but I knew there was something there and it was just a matter of time.”
“In this sport there are a lot of ups and downs,” he continued, “and it’s really easy to get caught up in the downs and not realize that just because you have a few bad races doesn’t mean you lose your ability to succeed, so just have to keep your head up and keep trying and hoping for the doors to open.”
When it comes to possibilities for potential Olympic selection, “I don’t know anything,” Kornfield said. “I can let you know in a couple weeks.”
Mathematically speaking, Kornfield currently ranks second to APU teammate Scott Patterson on the most recent version of the Olympic selection distance points list, which reflects both distance races from U.S. nationals.
For now, Kornfield plans to leave Alaska on Tuesday (that is, today) for a previously planned trip to Austria. He plans to work out precisely what races he will contest soon; he had planned on racing a Ski Classics marathon, but is currently uncertain where he will be racing next.
While Kornfield’s week at U.S. nationals exceeded his expectations, Monday’s third-place finisher, Saxton, didn’t have the week he was hoping for.
“I came here, like many people, with goals of heading to Korea and representing the country racing in the Games,” Saxton said after the final. “I fell short of that this week and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but I was really disappointed I wasn’t in the mix as much as I would have hoped to be. This week was difficult because I don’t feel like I put forth a representative effort.”
Saxton was quick to offer sincere congratulations to the skiers who had had more success this week.
“I am incredibly proud to know and am happy for Logan and Scott and Reese and all of the other champions from this week,” he said, “and incredibly happy that those are going to be the skiers going to over to represent us. I think it’s just, from a personal standpoint, people can understand I was disappointed not to feel like I had my absolutely best days out there, but I am really proud to end the day on a podium, representing the hard work that all my teammates and my coach and the program at Stratton have done all year, and to reward them for that work and that effort is a great feeling.”
Saxton also enjoyed the “playground mentality” of the sprint day.
“I think a lot of the times racing we can get lost in the technical aspects of it,” he mused, “but one of the reasons I love racing heats so much is, it just kind of reminds me of being back in elementary school and pointing to something in the far end of the playground, basketball hoop, or whatever it is, and just saying, ‘Let me race you there.’ And there’s no rules, there’s no anything, it’s just the feeling of you and the other person just going all out, and that’s a beautiful way to live and that’s a beautiful way to compete, and sprints are a wonderful thing like that.”
Strong Alaska Performances Throughout the Week
What a difference a year makes. One year ago this week, in the classic sprint at Soldier Hollow, APU didn’t put any athletes into the heats for the first time in at least a decade, done in by a combination of illness, seeding, weather conditions, and wax choice. This time around, head coach Erik Flora’s squad sent eight men through to the heats, six to the semifinal, three to the final, and two to the podium.*
The classic sprint capped a successful week for APU, and for Alaskan skiers more generally. Caitlin Patterson, who skis for CGRP, took all four gold medals for the women. Then APU skiers took all four golds on the men’s side, between Scott Patterson on Wednesday, Reese on Friday and Monday, and Kornfield on Sunday. Chelsea Holmes, Kornfield again, Hannah Halvorsen, Rosie Frankowski, Eric Packer, Becca Rorabaugh, and Kornfield again also stepped on the domestic podium for APU. All told, that’s 15 out of a possible 24 medals going to athletes who hail from or ski in Alaska.
(Although if you slice the data another way, there were also seven out of 12 possible medals in women’s races won by CGRP, between Patterson’s quadfecta and Kaitlynn Miller’s trifecta.)
This week’s results “just show the depth” of the team, Reese told FasterSkier after his race. “It speaks to the hard work of our coaches, especially Erik Flora. That guy will not be outworked, he just puts so much into us. I’m just really happy that we can have a week like this and go four for four in the men’s with APU, just to show that what he is doing works and how hard he works for us. … To get to this point that we can do that and crush all week and just give them a good show is really rewarding.”
“We’re all Alaska born-and-raised,” Reese added of the APU men. “Can’t beat that.”
*(Full disclosure, this reporter skis on the APU Masters team, and receives direct coaching from Flora roughly once a year at Masters Camp.)
Caitlin Patterson of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project leads Jasmi Joensuu (University of Denver) during their semifinal of the women’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — For the throng of spectators who lined up along the colorfully flagged sprint course at Kincaid Park on Friday, Mother Nature had donned a new look: an earl-gray sky and a rising sun, making the white snow-dusted base of the state’s Tordrillo Mountains (known locally as the “Ghost Range”) if ever so faintly distinguishable to the southwest.
Less than 48 hours had passed since the opening race of the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Kincaid Park, but the slushy trails and snowy skies that had prevailed Wednesday were tucked away in the closet.
The second day of racing found athletes and onlookers embracing the end of the sun’s bereavement; a few blinking in wonder and questioning if it was indeed, the same place they had ventured to two days before.
While the weather had transposed into an alter ego, one competition-day facet remained virtually unchanged: the name of the eventual winner.
Caitlin Patterson, who races for the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) and grew up in Anchorage, is proving herself a force to be reckoned with this week; the event weather and discipline may change, but her desire to finish first apparently does not.
From left to right: Kaitlynn Miller (Craftsbury Green Racing Project), Caitlin Patterson (CGRP) and Hannah Halvorsen (APU) on top of the American women’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint podium on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
The 27 year old won Friday’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint final in a time of 3:20.9 minutes and now holds four U.S. national titles. One of those came in Wednesday’s 10 k freestyle and the other two from 2016 U.S. nationals, in the 10 k classic individual start and 20 k freestyle mass start races. Friday’s victory was her first sprint national title.
Though she has been on a U.S. nationals sprint podium once before — she finished third in the 2016 freestyle race — Patterson was slightly surprised with the margin by which she won Friday. She finished the final with a definitive win, the next closest finisher 3.56 seconds behind.
“I expected, especially in the final, that someone would really have a push on the top of that hill, but maybe everyone was getting a little bit tired or maybe I just went for it a little harder than I realized I could,” Patterson reflected after.
But she was especially wary of Finland’s Jasmi Joensuu, the University of Denver junior who had finished second right behind Patterson in both the quarterfinal and semifinal.
“In our quarterfinals [Joensuu] was extremely strong at the top of the major uphill, hop skating, really putting a push over that I could barely match,” Patterson said.
Joensuu, 21, had been punching the pace in the front through the first climb for most of the day, leading Patterson out during both their quarterfinal and semifinal. In the early heats, the CGRP skier tended toward the back through the first third of the course.
“I was really strong in the uphill. That’s what I think was my strength today,” Joensuu said after.
“I’m a slow starter,” Patterson explained. “In the semifinal I found myself in the very back of the heat.”
It was in the downhill returning to the stadium and the final uphill hook back toward the finish that Patterson tended to regain ground; that is how she held off Joensuu in the finish of both the quarterfinal and the semifinal (they went one-two in both heats, respectively).
The final was not much different. Joensuu was still at the front of the charge off the start, but this time alongside the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) senior Petra Hynčicova, a 2017 NCAA double champion, who hails from the Czech Republic.
The University of Colorado Boulder’s (CU) Petra Hynčicova leads Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) skier Kaitlynn Miller back into the stadium during their semifinal of the women’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
“The first part was definitely the best part for me,” Hynčicova said after. I knew I had really good skis … I tried to go in the beginning. I think it was the right move.”
The two international college skiers continued in the front through the first descent running along the backside of the course. There, Patterson made her move. Tucking for speed, she slungshot her way from fourth to second, moving around Joensuu and her CGRP teammate Kaitlynn Miller, heading into the major climb side-by-side with Hynčicova.
Through the climb, Patterson tried to stay as quick as possible, reaching the top before the rest of the finalists. Pressing to keep up were Joensuu, Hynčicova, Miller, Hannah Halvorsen, of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and the U.S. Ski Team D-team, and Kelsey Phinney of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF).
“I was pretty tired by the final and didn’t have the legs to vie for a top spot but so it goes sometimes,” Phinney wrote in an email.
“I’ve still got to work on getting my extra sprint gear,” Phinney continued. “But it was great to have a really competitive final with everyone holding their own and jockeying for spots at different parts of the course, that’s always fun!”
As Phinney and the rest raced to catch up, Patterson focused on maintaining a gap. Now that she was in front, there was no turning back.
“I could feel people behind me but I was never looking back,” Patterson said. I knew that since I was going to be in front, I was not going to be drafting anyone on the downhill, so I better get out of there as fast as I could and then I just sent it on the downhill.”
Patterson cruised down back toward the stadium, Joensuu now the only one within proximal striking range, about five meters behind. Following Joensuu was Hynčicova and Halvorsen, then Phinney and Miller. The group looped into the final incline to the finish Patterson still leading the way, Miller having moved around Halvorsen during the course of the corner.
“I think you can always look at where you can improve and a lot of those girls were skiing that final U-turn a lot better, carrying more speed out of it than I did, so I’d like to work on that in the future,” the 19-year-old Halvorsen said.
Joensuu and Hynčicova had carried speed, but not enough to catch Patterson. The Finn claimed second 3.56 seconds behind, while Hynčicova earned third, 4.19 seconds back. In fourth, was Miller as the second American, 4.35 seconds out of from the win and 0.16 seconds out of third.
“It’s always exciting in the heats to keep moving up, especially when you feel like you gave it your all in the qualifier,” Miller said after the final.
Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team member Anne Hart (201) leads her teammate Erika Flowers during their quarterfinal of the women’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint on Friday at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.
“I definitely tend to have better results in classic, so for me, I just like to see improvement in my results, feel like I’ve done well,” added Miller, who was the 2016 classic sprint national champion and placed third in last year’s classic sprint. She also placed second in the 2016 classic 10 k individual start.
“I’m pretty happy with it,” she added of earning her first freestyle podium as the second American woman across the line.
Just missing the final and the winner of Friday’s qualifier was Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team in seventh. Earlier this season, Hart raced the opening International Ski Federation (FIS) races in Beitostølen, Norway, where she finished in the top 20 in the 10 k freestyle. She also won this year’s opening SuperTour freestyle sprint in West Yellowstone, Montana.
“I’m feeling overall good about the race, with a little bit of regret for what could have been.” Hart wrote in an email. “I had a really disappointing 10 k skate race for me — I had been hoping for a much better result, but unfortunately the course and conditions ended up not suiting my style of skiing.
“Both Pat O’Brien (SMS coach) and Max Lipset (strength coach) were talking to me after the 10K, and encouraging me to bring my best possible self to today’s effort, and throw a metaphorical punch that I would be proud of,” Hart continued. “With that mindset, some good energy, and great skis I was able to put together probably my best qualifier to date. I’ve never won a high-level full field qualifier, so while they don’t give flowers for that I am counting it as a definitive personal victory, and an affirmation in the training I’ve done.”
Hart won the qualifier in a time of 3:22.10 (Patterson qualified in 12th, 5.76 seconds back, and later won in a time of 3:20.9). The SMS skier advanced to the quarterfinals before getting eliminated in her semifinal after finishing third behind Miller and Hynčicova.
“My quarterfinal was good, although in retrospect I think I may have burned a little too much energy early on leading from start to finish,” Hart wrote. “I took a different tact in the semi-final to try and utilize the draft into the finish, but unfortunately followed the wrong person up the big hill and got a little further back than I would have liked to be.”
“So I put in my best effort to close the gap to the top two women, and came up less than a hundredth of a second short.” Hart continued. “So that stings a little bit to be so close to the final on a day when I know I could have been competitive in that last effort, but that is ski racing— for better or for worse— and I’m excited for the two races yet to come!”
Two races remain with a 20 k classic mass start on Sunday and a classic sprint on Monday.
In the junior women’s freestyle sprint on Friday, the win went to Sydney Palmer-Leger (SVSEF) in a time of 3:36.05. Callie Young of the Craftsbury Nordic Ski Center claimed second, while Kathleen O’Connell skiing for Montana State University took third.
Also in the junior’s final was Annika Hanestad in fourth, Sarah Morgan of Wasatch Nordic in fifth, and Kelly Koch of Loppet Nordic Racing in sixth.
The Stratton Mountain School (SMS) in Stratton, Vt., is looking for a coach to help with their junior program this winter.
Coach will work with SMS Nordic staff and junior team. Job will start in early November and run through late March. We are looking for an energetic person who enjoys working with high school age skiers. We have the flexibility to tweak the job to fit applicants strengths. Attitude, knowledge of sport and waxing are important.
Katharine Ogden (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com) and Léo Grandbois (Photo: IBU) are FasterSkier’s 2017 Juniors of the Year.
With the 2016/2017 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding North American junior athletes across all nordic disciplines.
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Katharine Ogden, Stratton Mountain School/U.S. Ski Team
Yes, Stratton’s Katharine Ogden has earned our “Junior of the Year” honors before. But this season, the 19-year-old Vermont skier rose to even greater heights. Early in the season, she snagged second-place honors in the senior fields at a SuperTour (the 10 k classic in West Yellowstone), a NorAm (the 10 k freestyle at Sovereign Lake), and U.S. National Championships (the 20 k classic mass start).
American Katharine Ogden (SMS/USST) and her dad John celebrate her bronze medal in the women’s 10 k skiathlon on Friday at 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: U.S. Ski Team/Tom Kelly)
“This week at worlds has been amazing,” Ogden, wrote in an email to FasterSkier at the time. “Wonderful skiing and good weather and unprecedented results for the whole team.”
And she told the U.S. Ski Team for a press release: “It was really incredible to stand up at the medals ceremony the other night [after the skiathlon]. The only thing I can think of that would be better is standing up there with my friends.”
17-year-old Léo Grandbois of Lennoxville, Québec, just made one international racing trip this season. But on the very first race of the trip, he made a splash.
The youth men’s 12.5 k individual podium after the first race of 2017 IBU Youth/Junior World Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia, with Canada’s Léo Grandbois in first (c), Russia’s Said Karimulla Khalili (l) in second, and Germany’s Danilo Riethmüller (r) in third. (Photo: Airat Aitniakov)
Grandbois had traveled to Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia, to represent Canada in the youth division at the International Biathlon Union’s World Youth and Junior Championships. The previous season he had competed at the Youth Olympic Games, with a top finish of 22nd, but this was his first time at the bigger event.
In the 12.5 k individual, Grandbois hit every target – the only competitor in the field to go 20-for-20 – and picked up a gold medal, by an impressive minute and 14 seconds over Said Khalili of Russia.
“I am probably the most happy man on earth today!” he wrote in an email to FasterSkier after his win.
Grandbois went on to be one of Canada’s most consistent performers at the Championships, finishing 14th in the sprint and 22nd in the pursuit. The sprint result came despite three penalties.
“I think it just says that I am quite strong even [during] a bad race,” Grandbois said at the time.
“I’m missing 15 days of school to be here, and my teachers/professors are probably thinking, ‘This guy is not doing the right thing,’ but I know that I am doing the right thing,” he wrote in his 20-for-20 interview.
And even then, he wasn’t done yet – Grandbois had proven his speed in that sprint, where he had the tenth-fastest course time in the field. Come the end of the season, he went to Cross Country Canada Ski Nationals for the first time and picked up junior national titles in the 10 k freestyle and the 15 k mass start.
Honorable Mention: Julia Kern, SMS Elite Team/Dartmouth College/U.S. Ski Team
Julia Kern, another Stratton skier with a U.S. Ski Team “D” team affiliation, joined Ogden on the relay podium at Soldier Hollow – and Kern’s efforts brought the team into sixth place at the halfway point of the race.
Julia Kern (U.S. Ski Team D-team/SMS) racing to 29th in the women’s 1.5 k freestyle sprint qualifier on Friday at World Cup Finals in Quebec City. In her first World Cup race, Kern ended up 24th on the day. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
“There is no one I would rather be on the podium with than my best friends and teammates,” Kern, 19, wrote at the time. “Not only did I share the experience with my best friends, but on home soil with all my family and friends there to celebrate with us!”
Six weeks later, Kern got the first World Cup start of her career. It was a skate sprint in Québec City as part of World Cup Finals – and not only did she qualify for the heats, but she finished 24th and scored World Cup points in her first try.
Coming off a clean sweep of the Junior Nationals races in Lake Placid, New York, Kern was confident, and at the same time unsure where she would stack up against the best skiers in the world.
“At the start line it almost felt like a dream because there I was at the start line next to some of the best skiers in the world, skiers who I have looked up to and watched race after race on my computer screen to learn and gain inspiration from,” she wrote. “This is a huge confidence booster for me because it is easy to make a goal and have my teammates and coaches who believe in me tell me results like this are possible. But it is another thing to actually live up to it and believe it yourself, too.”
Honorable Mention: Gareth Williams, Telemark Racers/Canadian Junior National Ski Team
Gareth Williams (Telemark Race Team) on his way to a personal-best 11th in the men’s 20 k skiathlon at 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
Where hasn’t Gareth Williams raced this season? The Kelowna cross-country skier started out in Canada, where he snagged a top-10 in the senior NorAm field at Sovereign Lake. At U.S. National Championships, he took third in the junior 10 k classic mass start. And then back in the U.S. for World Junior Championships, he turned in some of Canada’s best results, placing 11th in the 20 k skiathlon and 20th in the 10 k freestyle.
“It is exciting to see that I have the speed to ski with the best juniors in the world,” Williams wrote after the skiathlon. “Being so close to to the top 10 is my only disappointment.”
He headed for more junior racing after that, touring Switzerland and Germany and picking up finishes of second, sixth, and sixth in OPA Cup Juniors action.
Finally, Williams returned to Canada and started World Cup Finals, where he finished 71st overall.
“You’ve got a lot of fast guys, and you’re kind of going from being one of the faster guys to obviously to one of the slowest guys around,” Williams wrote of the experience. “That’s a cool feeling, actually.”
Paddy Caldwell (SMS/USST) racing to a career-best ninth in the men’s 15 k freestyle individual start on Thursday at U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, while his dad, Tim Caldwell, cheers him on. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Paddy Caldwell.)
Three years ago, American Patrick “Paddy” Caldwell made his debut at Junior World Championships, racing to 10th in the 20-kilometer skiathlon in Val di Fiemme, Italy. It was the first time he had ever done a skiathlon; he was 19 years old and a college freshman at the time.
Now a 22-year-old Dartmouth sophomore, who continues to train with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) as a member of the U.S. Ski Team’s development “D” team, Caldwell (son of four-time Olympic cross-country skier Tim Caldwell and cousin of current U.S. Ski Team standout Sophie Caldwell) is in his third U23 World Championships. The skiathlon distance has increased to 30 k, yet that classic-to-skate race remained his main focus for this year’s U23 Worlds at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah.
Earlier this week, he broke through with his best-ever sprint result at the championships, reaching the quarterfinals and placing 18th overall in the classic sprint. Then, on Thursday in the men’s 15 k freestyle, he cracked the top 10 for the first time in his U23/Junior Worlds career.
“I was really excited going into today’s race,” Caldwell wrote in an email on Friday morning. “15km FS is one of my favorite race formats. I have been targeting this week of races all year and was really looking forward to this race in particular.”
While the sprint was a primer for Caldwell, he said it also boosted his confidence leading into the two individual distance races at U23s.
“I have been working on my sprinting a lot this year and I am psyched to be mixing it up in the heats!” he wrote.
He described the conditions on Thursday as hard-packed with a fair amount of moisture, “which made for some fast skiing.”
It was overcast — grey and spitting rain at times — a stark contrast from the preceding bluebird days. But with temperatures just below freezing, the course remained firm.
“My strategy for the day was to pin it from the start and hold on,” said Caldwell, who started 44th of 53 in the men’s three-lap, individual start race, in a post-race interview with the U.S. Ski Team. “It was a really tight race and I definitely paid for my first lap, but I am happy to have put it all out there.”
After being passed by Russia’s eventual winner Alexander Bolshunov, who started 30 seconds behind him in bib 45, Caldwell initially finished sixth, 1:03.6 minutes behind Bolshunov. Three later starters ultimately bumped the American to ninth, including Russia’s Alexey Chervotkin, who took second at the finish, 21.8 seconds behind Bolshunov (who won in 32:55.7).
“I started off with a fast first lap and was getting splits between 1st and 4th for the first five or six kilometers,” Caldwell recalled in an email. “Bolshunov caught me around 7 kms into the race… I skied with him for about 1.5km but on the big downhill halfway through the 5km loop another skier slotted in between us and Bolshunov ended up gapping us before I could get around the other skier — it would have been sweet to ski with him some more but who knows how long I could have stuck with him. I could see him for the rest of the race which was a good gauge and kept me pushing to make up time on him.
“In the end I am really excited to be in the top ten overall and to have left it all out there,” Caldwell added. “It was a tight race and I was a bit disappointed to be at the tail end of a close group of times but in the end I am really happy with the result. I want to be the best all around skier I can be and I am really excited to be making progress in both sprint and distance racing.”
The all-Russian podium in the men’s 15 k freestyle at 2017 U23 World Championships, with Alexander Bolshunov (c), who won by nearly 22 seconds over Alexey Chervotkin (l) in second, and was 28.2 seconds ahead of Denis Spitsov (r) in third. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
For the second-straight day of 2017 Junior/U23 World Championships, Russia claimed all of the medals in the men’s race, with Denis Spitsov placing third (+28.2).
“It’s very, very cool,” Bolshunov, the silver medalist in Tuesday’s classic sprint, told the U.S. Ski Team media. “I couldn’t explain my emotions now, it’s really cool.”
“I was really excited to be in the mix with the top guys today,” Caldwell told the U.S. Ski Team. “U23s have been my focus all year and I am psyched to have improved on my results from past U23 and World Junior races.”
Next up for Caldwell, Saturday’s skiathlon, which will be his first since placing 20th in the 2015 skiathlon in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
“I have only done two skiathlons (Val de Fiemme and Almaty) but both were really fun and exciting races,” he wrote. “Mass start races are always a blast!”
Adam Martin (Northern Michigan University) racing to 22nd in the men’s 15 k freestyle at 2017 U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
Four American men raced the 15 k, with Adam Martin (Northern Michigan University) placing 22nd (+2:22.4), Jack Hegman (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) 24th (+2:25.2), and Cal Deline (Dartmouth Ski Team) 37th (+3:48.6). For Martin, 22nd was his best at U23 Worlds by one place, and Hegman and Deline also notched personal bests at their first U23 Worlds.
Evan Palmer-Charrette (NTDC Thunder Bay) led Canadian men in 34th (+3:20.2) for his best result at his U23 Worlds debut as well. Alexis Dumas, of the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre (CNEPH) followed in 38th (+3:52.9), tying his U23 best. Julien Lamoureux (CNEPH) was 43rd (+4:16.7) in his first race of U23 Worlds, and Scott James Hill (Team Hardwood) 49th (+6:15.2).
Second-Straight Win for Dyvik; Beatty 16th
Dahria Beatty (AWCA/Canadian U25 Team) racing to 16th in the women’s 10 k freestyle on Thursday at 2017 U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
In the women’s 10 k freestyle, Dahria Beatty (Alberta World Cup Academy/Canadian National U25 Team) notched her second top 20 of the week in 16th, after placing 12th in Tuesday’s classic sprint.
She finished the two-lap 10 k in 27:39.8, more than a minute faster than her 10 k freestyle time at 2017 U.S. nationals last month (where she finished 17th. Beatty went on to place fourth in the classic sprint and win the freestyle prologue at U.S. nationals).
On Thursday, she was 1:25.8 minutes back from the winner, Sweden’s Anna Dyvik, who racked up her second-straight gold of the championships with the best time of the day in 26:14.0.
“Today’s race played out fairly similarly to the 10k skate at US Nationals, but not on an extreme of scale,” Beatty wrote in an email, referring to the conditions. “I was skiing where I wanted to be for the first two thirds of the race but then I really struggled at the end.
“Today’s race was extremely hard,” she added. “The courses here are really tough by any standard and the altitude makes it even harder. I tried to go out fairly conservatively by my standards today as I like starting fast. I was able to start smooth and build through the first lap into the second and was sitting in a good position just in the top 10.”
Despite trying to pace her race, Beatty described “blowing up” in the last 2.5 k.
“The last big climb was a very painful one today,” she wrote. “I haven’t quite figured out the 5k course here at Soldier Hollow yet and how to save something in my legs for the end but I was happy with my effort. I raced hard and used the tactics that I thought would give me the best result possible. I was hoping to be able to be in the top 12 but am still pleased to have skied at that pace for part of the race.”
Sweden’s Anna Dyvik racing to her second-straight gold medal of 2017 U23 World Championships on Thursday in the women’s 10 k freestyle at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)
Beatty started 32nd (of 44) and Dyvik in bib 33 passed her around 5 k.
“I only skied with her for a few hundred meters, she was moving fast and I knew if I tried to stay with her I would end of blowing up and really paying for it later in the race,” Beatty wrote.
The top Canadian in the last two U23 races, Beatty planned to race Saturday’s 15 k skiathlon.
“I’m looking forward to the Skiathlon with hopes of being able to put together a bit stronger of a performance all the way to the finish line not just for part of the race,” Beatty wrote. “Mass starts are always exciting and I am looking forward to doing some pack skiing, it was pretty windy out there today.”
Dyvik outlasted four Norwegians for the win, which she took by 16.8 seconds over Norway’s Tiril Udnes Weng (Heidi Weng’s cousin) in second. Norway claimed second through fourth place, with Lovise Heimdal in third (+23.0), and Lotta Udnes Weng (Weng’s twin sister) just 0.1 seconds off the podium in fourth (+23.1).
Half a second behind Beatty, the Czech Republic’s Petra Hyncicova (University of Colorado-Boulder Ski Team) finished 17th (+1:26.3) for her first top 20 at her second U23 Worlds.
Canada’s Frédérique Vézina (CNEPH) finished 25th (+1:58.8) for a career best at her second U23 Worlds as well, Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay/NST U25 Team) was 27th (+2:07.8), and Jenn Jackson (Lappe Nordic/Team Hardwood) 37th (+3:31.8).
Kelsey Phinney (SVSEF) led the Americans in 30th (+2:24.6), Jesse Knori (University of Colorado-Boulder) was 32nd (+2:36.4), Alayna Sonnesyn (University of Vermont) 33rd (+2:51.4) in her first U23 Worlds race, and Nichole Bathe (University of Alaska Fairbanks) 39th (+4:19.8).
Australia’s Casey Wright (University of Alaska Anchorage Ski Team) followed in 40th (+4:22.0).
Kam Husain, of the Stratton Mountain School, racing at U.S. SuperTour Spring Series last season in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: NENSA/Facebook)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 19-year-old Kam Husain, of the Stratton Mountain School, who’s representing the U.S. at his first Junior Worlds.
***
“My full name is Kamran Husain, but you can call me Kam. I was born in Leonardtown, Md., raised in Fort Kent, Maine, and one thing you should know about my hometown is we grow lots of potatoes.
I started cross-country skiing when I was six, thanks to MWSC [Maine Winter Sports Center]. I currently train in Stratton, Vt., with SMS [Stratton Mountain School].
If I’m not skiing, you might find me rewatching ‘Game of Thrones’. If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be ‘Outliers‘.
One of the things I’m most excited about for Junior Worlds at Soldier Hollow is racing a skiathlon. One race I’m especially targeting there is the classic sprint.
The best advice anyone ever gave me about skiing or racing was to pace myself. One of the best race memories I have is winning the NENSA J2 Fest.
If I could meet one World Cup skier, it would be Katharine Ogden.
If I don’t end up being a professional skier, I’ll probably be somewhere a little warmer.
I’m missing zero days of school to be here; I’m taking a gap year.
Katharine Ogden, of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, in the women’s 20 k classic at 2017 U.S. nationals earlier this month at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. She finished second among the senior women. (Photo: U.S. Ski Team)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at next week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. First up, 19-year-old Katharine Ogden, of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, who’s representing the U.S. at her third Junior Worlds.
***
“My full name is Katharine Ogden, but you can call me KO. I was born in Seattle, Wash., and raised in Landgrove, Vt., and one thing you should know about my hometown is there are only about 100 people living there.
I started cross-country skiing when I was three, thanks to my papa who is a ski coach. I currently train in Stratton, Vt., with Stratton Mountain School.
If I’m not skiing, you might find me mountain biking. If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be ‘Looking for Alaska’.
One of the things I’m most excited about for Junior Worlds at Soldier Hollow is racing at altitude. One race I’m especially targeting there is the 10 k skiathlon.
The best advice anyone ever gave me about skiing or racing was my dad always tells me, ‘It’s fun to kick ass.’ One of the best race memories I have is when my teammate (Julia Kern) won the relay race in a photo finish at my first JNS at Soldier Hollow in 2012.
If I could meet one World Cup skier, it would be Heidi Weng.
If I don’t end up being a professional skier, I’ll probably be a recreational skier 🙂.
I’m missing zero days of school to be here, and my teachers are probably thinking, “I don’t have teachers.”
The Stratton Mountain School Elite Team is hosting 2 clinics
Sunday August 21 at Stratton Mountain School
Sunday September 25 in Hanover, NH
Come rub shoulders with Olympic athletes and celebrate cross-country skiing!
Both clinics start with instruction and training and end with a video presentation and a question and answer period with the team. Everyone should bring running clothes, bounding poles and a change of clothes.
Clinics will run from 2:30-4:30 pm. There is no charge for the clinics. The team mission statement is “International Excellence, Local Inspiration” and this is our way of giving back to the community that supports us.
For more information on the Stratton clinic, contact Sverre: scaldwell@gosms.org
For the second installment of “What Elite Skiers Eat for Breakfast“, we asked Stratton Mountain School (SMS) athletes to share a photo of a typical breakfast for a weekday training day and describe what they eat. Here’s what they told us:
“When I have time, I like to make breakfast burritos filled with rice, eggs, Cabot cheese, baby spinach, and top it all with bbq sauce. It’s a good way to get a lot of carbs, and depending on the number of eggs a fair amount of protein as well. I know that bbq sauce isn’t for everyone but I would highly recommend introducing it to your breakfast lineup.”
“Big bowl of plain greek yogurt topped with banana and a mix of berries or other fresh fruit plus granola (my favorites are Elizabeth’s pumpkin fig and Ezekiel cinnamon raisin) and cinnamon. I always finish with a side of peanut butter toast (crunchy peanut butter!) topped with hemp seeds and a big french press for coffee plus some water if I am being a good athlete :)”
“I definitely try and keep things interesting (there is nothing worse than a breakfast burn out) but one of my favorites is some high protein homemade pancakes topped with all the fruit in the fridge (as local as I can find it) and a big scoop of Greek yogurt. And coffee — lots of coffee.”
“This is a smoothie bowl (mango, strawberry banana with yogurt) topped with granola, sliced banana, yogurt drizzle and honey drizzle.”
“I like a strong black coffee in my owl mug (the mug is an important part of my breakfast routine) and oats with berries, yogurt, nuts and honey.”
“English muffins with peanut butter, banana, and honey is a standard go to.”
“Then I typically mix it up with some kind of cereal and yogurt. If I can use home made gernola, that’s the best. On rest days when we have more time I’m the go-to pancake guy at the SMS house.”
“My breakfast varies depending on the day and what we have for food in our kitchen, but one of my favorite easy breakfasts is buttered toast, scrambled eggs, cheese, avocado, and salt!”
“First: Coffee. Then a large bowl (or two) of: steel cut oats, greek yogurt, crunchy peanut butter, homemade raspberry jam, cereal of choice (usually granola or Kashi) – when available add blueberries and/or banana.”
“My go-to breakfast would be plain greek yogurt with granola and lots of fruit such as blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, bananas and pineapple. I also like to add a touch of honey :)”
“I’m not too much of a breakfast guy if I’m training early. I definitely don’t enjoy the feeling of having a stomach full of eggs and bacon when I head out for a hard interval session or long OD. Most of the time, I just make myself a bowl of granola with Greek yogurt, almond milk, and some fresh fruit (usually either blueberries, strawberries, or a banana). Most days I’ll drink 2 cups of black coffee, but on days when I’m training a bit later in the day I’ll make some green tea. And I usually compliment everything with a glass of orange juice.” On off days, he sleeps in a bit and might make eggs, pancakes or waffles. While with his girlfriend and teammate Sophie Caldwell in her hometown of Peru, Vt., they’ll head to the local general store, “JJ Hapgood’s, for a breakfast sandwich (English muffin with an egg, local bacon, and local cheddar) and a cup of coffee.”
Which elite nordic team (in the U.S., Canada or elsewhere) would you like to hear from next for our breakfast series? Leave your recommendations in the comments section below!
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![The all-Russian podium in the men's 15 k freestyle on Thursday at 2017 U23 World Championships, with Alexander Bolshunov (c) who won by nearly 22 seconds over Alexey Chervotkin (l) in second, and was 28.2 seconds ahead of Denis Spitsov (r) in third. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/SMF8375.jpg")
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![Dahria Beatty (AWCA/Canadian U25 Team) racing to 16th in the women's 10 k freestyle on Thursday at 2017 U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/SMF2714.jpg")
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![Kam Husain, of the Stratton Mountain School, racing at U.S. SuperTour Spring Series last season in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: NENSA/Facebook)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/01/IMG_0021.jpg")
![Katharine Ogden, of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, in the women's 20 k classic at 2017 U.S. nationals earlier this month at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: U.S. Ski Team)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/01/BG5B1844-XL.jpg")
