Tag: Tracey Cote

Jack Young Kicks Like a (Colby) Mule

Colby College skier, Jack Young, during the sprint qualifier at the Canmore, Alberta World Cup in February. Since then, his racing performances have earned him a place on the Stifel U.S. Ski Team. (Photo: Nordic Focus)

The story of how Colby College became the Mules traces back to years of listless play from their football team, before a season in which the team suddenly became one of the best in New England. That led the Sports Editor at the student newspaper, The Colby Echo, to remark that instead of “black horse” to win their conference, Colby was suddenly a “white mule.” A couple of creative undergrads took the cue, sourced the rural environs around Waterville, Maine, and the next weekend, a real live mule patrolled the Colby sideline.

A century later, the story seems allegorical for the story of Colby nordic skier Jack Young. The Jay, Vermont native and Colby Junior spent his winter chasing down World Cup starts as one of the country’s best sprint prospects. Then, in his first World Cup start, Young quickly put together a memorable performance in Canmore where he qualified for the skate sprint heats in 11^th place. In retrospect, it pointed to the potential of American skiers to leverage the relative home-field advantage of a rare North American World Cup tour into expectation-defying results. A week later, Gus Schumacher won in Minneapolis. Black horse to white mule-type stuff.

Earlier this month, as the buds of spring emerged on Colby’s Mayflower Hill campus, Jack Young’s performance proved to earn him a nomination to the D-Team of the Stifel U.S. Ski Team. He is the first Colby skier to receive a nomination while still enrolled at the small college of 2,200 undergraduates in Central Maine.

Young’s Colby College affiliation stood out among a nominee sheet that includes storied collegiate ski programs with more Team USA alumni in their history than one can count: University of Vermont, Dartmouth College, University of Utah, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and University of Alaska-Anchorage, among others. Young qualified for the team via objective criteria requiring him to be ranked in the top 175 skiers in the World in his birth year, a standard that speaks to his accomplishments as an athlete, and his embracing of a Colby College ski-culture that revels in the role of offbeat outsider.

A Whole New World…Cup

When Young woke up on the morning of his World Cup race in Canmore, he was focused on feelings more than results. “Once I got a World Cup bid, my complete focus changed to getting to the place that I race best, which is not just physically being rested, but in a place where I have carved out the space in my mind to just get excited to ski race.” When he finally got to ski the sprint qualifier, that feeling transformed into something like euphoria, “I hit the top of the course, and all I was focused on from there was riding the wave I got from imagining that moment and reaching it,” he said. “I didn’t have a thought of where I might stack up in the field. I think that’s when the qualifier fell into place for me.”

As Young crossed the line, where he was stacking up in the field came into view for everyone; it simply astounded. “[American] Murphy Kimball was in the finish corral and was cooled down enough to be processing what the announcers were saying, which I wasn’t, and he heard ‘Jack Young, in 11^th,’ and just immediately looked at me. So I stare back for like three seconds of silence, and then he just gives me the biggest hug ever. I started to get it then.”

Young had just started to process his achievement as others looked on with a mixture of awe and dis-belief. “My sister texted me asking if the result on the FIS App was correct.” His Colby teammates, camped up in Hanover, New Hampshire at the EISA Dartmouth Carnival also quickly got in contact. “They were like, it’s not just us that’s excited for you, EVERYONE here is excited.”

Meanwhile, Colby Head Coach Tracey Cote, was spelling it out in even more plain terms. In response to a text that said, “Mules in the Heats,” her response was an exuberant, “HOLY S***!” For Cote, the moment was a culmination of what she has always coached towards: not just an athlete reaching a goal they’ve worked at for years, but doing so in a way that reflected the unique intersection that happens when an athlete brings the character qualities they hold as a person to performing in the ever-complex sport of nordic skiing. “He started thinking about wanting to qualify for the World Cup in the summer,? said Cote. “And from that point forward, everything he did in training and life was centered around this goal.”

Looking back, Young sees Cote’s philosophy as key to his preparations to excel at the sport’s highest level. “She will always say, ‘[at Colby] we coach skiers, not just skiing’ and I think it took me a little bit to understand that,” said Young. “But I look at Canmore, and I think about how I was prepared to ski as well as I did. It wasn’t just because my training was good. It wasn’t just that I was physically rested. It was because I went in trusting that if I carried myself how I know I can carry myself, ski how I know I can ski, things would fall into place. I don’t get that without Tracey, or my teammates working everyday towards a culture that empowers that.”

Jack Young at the World Cup in Minneapolis, MN in February. (Photo: Nordic Focus)

To Cote, Young’s results on the World Cup and throughout the season were evidence of his personal capacity to be “exceptionally collaborative.”

“We meet constantly to talk about how we can incorporate what he needs into the team training and when he just needs something different,” said Cote. “I have so much respect for skiers who can achieve incredible results while also lifting up their teammates. Not every top-level skier can do this, but I have been lucky to coach a few in my career and Jack is definitely one!”

Cote and Young also have cued in on Young’s profile as a skier acting as a litmus test for the team-forward culture at Colby. The NCAA circuit in which Colby competes has traditionally been focused on distance-only racing. Young, who earned his World Cup bids on his sprinting ability, has needed to create a training and racing calendar that can look very different from that of his Colby teammates.

“The coolest thing about training at Colby is that in any given workout, one of our guys can do something special,” said Young. “I hope that in a sprint workout, guys like Zach [Nemeth] can push themselves off me, and in a distance workout, I learn a lot from Zach, and the others too.”

Still, there are times when Young strays to keep sharp for sprinting. “He is so intentional about not disrupting the team culture,” says Cote. “Everyone understands when Jack does a different workout.” Young too, has seen it as a would-be weakness that’s turned into a key strength for the Colby team. “The thing about our season is that we have all fall as a team to work out any tension around individualized plans,” Young explained. “When we hit winter, we’re all in lockstep, the whole team, and better for it.”

The process of creating a team culture comes with a necessary constraint in NCAA skiing that Young looks at as a continuing opportunity. “The reality is the team is different every year, because you lose guys to graduation, and you have freshman that come in. Which again, [what you] try to do is turn what might be a weakness into a strength. Every fall, we’re looking to create a team that’s going to work best for that season.”

With that challenge of creating a culture ahead of him for one more year, Young eagerly anticipating the opportunity. “I get to bring the World Cup experience back, that’s exciting.”

Young, far right, in his Canmore World Cup sprint heat alongside eventual World Cup Overall champion Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR). (Photo: Nordic Focus)

For Young, that’s the triumph of his sprint qualifier just as much as his “welcome to the Big Leagues” moment that came in his sprint heat at Canmore. In a heat with eventual World Cup champion Harald Oestberg Amundsen (Norway) and World Championship sprint medalist Jules Chappaz (France), he was competitive, but eventually lost ground in the final surge. “I’d talked [the heat] over with the US Team coaches, and we both agreed with it being my first time going in and trying to stay relaxed, [but] the reality of those World Cup heats is that being ‘relaxed’ per se means still jockeying for a good position so that when the heat goes…and they GO…you can react quick enough to adjust to the pace.”

Young sees the experience as a necessary learning ground, and knows what to adjust going forward. “I can’t wait to bring that back to training,” he said. “The idea that when you enter a World Cup heat, everyone thinks they can be in the top two in that heat. To me, that’s an attitude I need to have, and I want all my teammates to have too.”

Cote has no doubt those new lessons will combine with Young’s steady leadership. “He’s been a leader sine the day he stepped foot on our campus and always brings a level of positive and competitive spirit that infuses confidence into his teammates.”

Tracey Cote’s ski career started out on the back forty, literally, here pictured alongside brother, Ted in Elkhart Lake, WI (Photo: Courtesy Image/Ted Theyerl)

A Match Made in Waterville, Maine

The success Young had this season may seem like the result of a serendipitous match with the Colby program. But for longtime observers, Young’s nomination to the Stifel US Ski Team is the logical outgrowth of a program built steadily over generations.

All great programs bear traces of their leaders. For Colby, that’s found in Tracey Cote, who has served as Head Coach for 27 seasons. Cote (née Theyerl—note the non-coincidental author’s byline of this article) grew up in the small Wisconsin village of Elkhart Lake, an hour and a half into the hills north of Milwaukee. Tracey and brother Ted took their first ski strides in the Schultz family cornfield behind their modest home on the outskirts of Elkhart Lake, and continued on into American Birkebeiners of the 1970’s. Her beginnings in the sport were literally out on the back forty.

Starting out skiing in the Kettle-Moraine forest was a far cry from the traditional skier development centers across the United States. Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah High School certainly was not a ski academy. Fifteen miles west of Sheboygan wasn’t Aspen. Where Cote learned to ski, she learned to love skiing alone. When she did ski with others, it was a family affair. Those two elements continued through Cote’s own collegiate career at Northern Michigan University, her taking on the Colby program in its first year as a Division I ski program in 1997, and through NCAA Championship qualifiers, NCAA All-American finishers, World Junior Championship qualifiers, and now, a US Ski Team member. Her coaching is driven by a desire for every Colby skier to intensely pursue their own competitive skiing goals, while maintaining the perspective to intensely pursue relationships with their teammates, and the sport, that makes everyone feel supported. That’s a close approximation to the “team culture” often spoken about by Young and Cote. “Any one skier’s success is a success for everyone.”

That guiding principle has never come at the expense of letting some of Cote’s own background and quirks shine through. “Tracey will talk a lot about is how training is often a process of avoiding mistakes, more than finding a silver bullet,” says Young. “And that often translates into letting her athletes train on the terms that work best for them.

For years, Cote’s athletes have come from backgrounds in cycling, soccer, basketball, football, and even more esoteric pursuits. She also has a penchant for recruiting skiers who come from out-of-the-way talent centers, and keep to unconventional paths in the sport. The Colby program’s first World Cup skier under Cote came earlier this year when alumni Erin Bianco, who currently skis for Bridger Ski Foundation out of Bozeman, Montana, made her first World Cup starts in Oberhof, Germany. Bianco qualified for her first World Cup sprint heats on the same day Young put in his performance at Canmore. When Cote recruited the Iron Range, Ely, Minnesota native though, Bianco was out of skiing, running at St. Olaf College. Bianco transferred to Colby and became an NCAA All-American.

Further back, the Colby’s program milestones have been linked to out-of-the-way stories of success. Colby’s first All-American, Olivia Amber, came from the small outpost of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, where she and her sister constituted the entirety of their high school team. Colby’s most dominant skier during Cote’s tenure, Zane Fields, was a Woodstock, Vermont skier who came direct from that state’s high school league. The program’s first World U23 Championship qualifier, Andrew Egger, was a sprint specialist who was concurrently enrolled in Officer Training School for the US Marine Corps.

Colby College Head Coach Tracey Cote and former Assistant Brad Ravenelle at work in the wax trailer at US Nationals in January 2023. (Photo: Colby College Ski Team)

They all have come to Waterville, a post-industrial New England mill town in central Maine where they found an out-of-the-way approach to pursuing the sport at the highest level. Cote and Colby have made sure those skiers have all the resources to do so. A decade ago, Colby partnered with the town of Waterville to revive and expand an abandoned quarry, Quarry Road, down the hill from campus into a homologated 5 k course with snowmaking. Two years ago, Colby opened a $200 million-dollar athletic center boasting a full support staff, and arguably the best waxing facilities in the East. For Cote, there was a clear direction in the investments: “It’s made us an attractive place to support a collegiate ski career.”

All of which sets up to point towards an understanding of why Jack Young has not just excelled as a skier, but excelled as a Colby skier. Young has been nordic skiing since he was a little kid in Jay, Vermont’s Bill Koch Youth League (BKL). He didn’t connect with the sport competitively though until relatively late, joining up with the nearby Craftsbury Ski Club in high school. By then, he was more known around Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom as his high school’s starting quarterback than as a top junior skiing prospect.

He found success, becoming a Vermont State Champion skier five times over. However, he still went relatively under the radar to the college coaches casting a recruiting net over a national pool of skiing talent. In short, Young was a bit of an outsider going into college. Which made him the type of skier with whom Cote has had success in her tenure.

Scenes from season’s past: a young Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club racer—Jack Young of Jay, VT—gets some help from his father, Chris, to adjust his pole straps in the start corral, NENSA Eastern Cup. (Photo: Craftsbury Outdoor Center, December 2016)

Young admits that his current list of accomplishments is something that he didn’t even fathom at this time last year. “This season was a sequence of things that just kept going,” he said. “I didn’t take that for granted, but I did have to learn to take it. You go from dreaming of winning a SuperTour qualifier, then you do it like I did in Anchorage, and then you start piecing things together from there. Oh, I could make the World Cup. Oh, I made the World Cup…things like that. I guess the US Ski Team is that too.”

His nomination to the Stifel U.S. Ski Team is something that both he, and the program he comes from, see as the realization of the groundwork laid over the course of decades. “I’ve always loved skiing,” he said. “But really I think the difference has been that I learned to love the competition and training aspect of skiing. When I was a kid in the BKL, it wasn’t on the forefront of my mind to compete on the world stage. Now it is.”

In Jack Young, the skier, there’s a parable for a program. No longer the black horse, with Young, the Colby mules are kicking on.

May 13, 2024
Part of the Team, Part II: Female Collegiate Coaches in the U.S

The Bates College nordic team after winning its third Chummy Broomhall Cup last season. (Photo: Flying Point Road Photography/flyingpointroad.com)

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a four-part series on the impact of female nordic coaches in the U.S. In Part I, former U.S. Ski Team member Nancy Fiddler introduced herself and reason for writing about the topic. Part II takes a look at several female collegiate coaches and their influence at that level. Parts III and IV will discuss female coaches in the Junior Nationals pipeline as well as grassroots programs across the country.

***

Part II of my series on female cross-country ski coaches in the U.S. looks at the careers of five female collegiate coaches. As I have said before, back in the 1970’s, when I was a collegiate racer, there were no female coaches on the scene. I contacted these women through email and was pleasantly surprised by their generous and very eloquent responses. Each has made a contribution to skiing and has a distinctive story to tell.

To give a little background, Cami Thompson-Graves is an old teammate and friend, Tracey Cote someone I have heard much about and finally met a year ago, and Becky Woods is the daughter of Bob Flynn, who was the head ski coach when I was at Bates. As a coach, I watched Abi Holt and Kristina Trygstad-Saari during their racing careers, and now am following their coaching careers with interest.

Cami Thompson-Graves

Women’s Team Coach, Dartmouth College, 24 years

“I see myself as just one person contributing to a team.” — Cami Thompson-Graves, on how she’s contributing to the big picture of women’s skiing in the U.S.

Dartmouth women’s coach Cami Thompson-Graves (r) and interim men’s coach Kristina Trygstad-Saari. (Photo: Flying Point Road Photography/flyingpointroad.com)

Cami Thompson-Graves has indeed contributed to the recent success of the U.S. Women’s Cross Country Ski Team. Just this spring, 2012 Dartmouth graduate Sophie Caldwell was named to the U.S. Ski Team (USST) B-team.

While Dartmouth did not win the 2013 NCAA Championships, its women are definitely players on the national collegiate stage, with freshman Mary O’Connell taking second and fourth places in March in Ripton, Vt. With the woman affectionately known as Coach Cami at the helm, Dartmouth won NCAAs in 2007.

Her own racing pedigree, which spans a career from Vermont High School Ski Meister to USST member, has seen some success. Thompson-Graves was a promising racer in the mid ’80s with near perfect technique whose career was cut short after a bout of overtraining. She turned her talents to coaching.

Thompson-Graves’ 24-year career at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., puts her at the leading edge of the phenomenon of female collegiate coaches in a traditionally all-male environment. Pursuing an interest in motivating and developing athletes, Thompson-Graves began her career at Dartmouth as a development team coach, soon moving up to the head women’s coach position.

“I love the women I work with,” she said. “They have such different personalities and work towards their goals each in their own way.”

Dartmouth women have a strong role model to look up to in their coach, who juggles her career with being married and parenting. Thompson-Graves feels like she is making a difference for the skiers in her program.

“I think we have a great team here, and it is all those women working together that help each of them achieve whatever their goals are,” she said.

Beyond teaching the women in green the secrets to maintaining a rigorous training and racing schedule while attending classes in one of the country’s top schools, Thompson-Graves is impacting her skiers in other ways.

“Hopefully they are learning to think big … and to make their own decisions,” she said. “It is so important for women to realize they can do this.”

Her coaching style is distinctive; one might say she leads in a soft manner.

“I feel strongly that a coach is a mentor, not a dictator,” she said. “We should be challenging, guiding, and nurturing rather than micro-managing and directing.”

On the subject of whether female nordic coaches are on a par with their male peers, Thompson-Graves is vehement that a woman is capable of doing anything a man can in this field. The difficulty for women, she believes, is that the lifestyle is tough, especially for young coaches.

“If we want more women to be involved in the sport, then we need young women to see it is something they can and might want to aspire to,” she said. “I am lucky that I can do my job and still have a family. Some coaching jobs are much less family friendly.”

Thompson-Graves will be leading young women in skiing for some time to come; she knows she has a great coaching situation and she appears to get just as much back as she gives to the team she coaches. As long as Thompson-Graves feels like she is doing a good job, she will continue to coach.

“When I see so many of the women I have worked with still involved in the sport in some way I am proud of what I have accomplished,” she said

Tracey Cote

Head Nordic Coach, Colby College, 16 years

“I’m modeling the great things about being involved in skiing for a long time. Some of my proudest moments have been to watch my former skiers in their new roles as coaches. This contribution, I know, is making a difference.” – Tracey Cote

Tracey Cote (Photo: Flying Point Road Photography/flyingpointroad.com)

Tracey Cote was running cross-country at the University of Minnesota-Duluth when her teammates convinced her to go out for the brand-new nordic team. Cote ended up pursuing her love for her the sport even after the Duluth team was cut two years later, transferring to Northern Michigan University, where she ran and skied for the duration of her undergraduate career.

A year after taking a part-time coaching position at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Cote was offered a full-time faculty position there, coaching the men’s and women’s nordic teams. On top of her racing experience, Cote has a Master’s degree in health education and a teaching degree.

Heading into her 16^th year at Colby, she hasn’t looked back.

“The one thing about ski coaching is that as sad as it is to see your seniors leave, you’re always excited to see your incoming skiers develop and you can’t imagine not being her for their four years,” she said. “This pattern could keep me coaching for the next 25 years!”

Citing fellow college coaches Becky Woods (Bates College) and Dartmouth’s Thompson-Graves as mentors, Cote soon hit her stride as a coach and leader of young people. Athlete development is what she likes most about her job and the challenge to inspire each skier to reach his or her potential.

“My biggest reward is seeing what my skiers accomplish after Colby,” she said. “I feel lucky to have developed close relationships with such amazing people.”

Cote said she’s not afraid to push her skiers to make them better, but she is their biggest fan and supports them when they are struggling.

With three boys, ages 4, 6 and 9, Cote and her husband, Patrick, are an involved nordic-skiing family. Waterville has recently been a hotbed of activity with the formation of the Central Maine Ski Club four years ago and the recent addition of the Quarry Road racing venue just a short distance from campus. While on sabbatical leave last year, Cote jumped into athlete development at the grassroots level and got the “Get Ready to Race Program” for third- and fourth-graders off the ground.

Cote will be back on the college circuit next winter and looks forward to getting back to her job developing athletes at the highest level.

“Although I coach a small program in the scheme of things, I do my best to develop athletes at the highest level,” she said. “I see my program as a step to bigger opportunities in skiing.”

On the topic of gender equality in coaching nordic, Cote said she “feels very lucky to be in the college world, as I feel men and women are treated very equally and the Eastern [conference] coaches are very professional.”

She is not sure that coaching at the Junior National level has reached that degree of professionalism and is more male-dominated, but thinks this will change with time.

Between her jobs as head coach, associate athletic director and senior women’s administrator at Colby, Cote is a wife and a mom. She knows what it is like to be busy.

“Obviously, the U.S. Ski Team has been primarily coached by men, and I may be wrong, but I don’t think too many women are willing to live the lifestyle it takes at that level,” she said.

Cote sees herself as a role model for women and said she’s “really proud to be one of a few women in any college sports program coaching men … with the U.S. women doing so well and being such an inspiration to a whole new crop of women, I hope we see female coaches at the highest ranks.”

Abi Holt

Head Nordic Coach, University of Utah, four years

“I think I am one of a few coaches in the country who has coached at literally every level of skiing. I have coached youth ski leagues, middle school skiers, high school skiers, college, US Ski Team, and masters… and taught beginner ski lessons.” – Abi Holt

A former Sun Valley junior and eventual coach, Abi Holt (l) with SVSEF nordic director Rick Kapala (Photo: Max Durtschi/SVSEF blog)

Abi Holt, head coach of the men’s and women’s nordic teams at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has a solid grasp on the skiing pipeline. Her own ski-racing background covers just as much ground.

As a junior from Sun Valley, Idaho, Holt was a three-time junior national champion and an 18-time junior All-American. Skiing for Dartmouth, she was an NCAA All-American. She said she fell into coaching “sort of by accident.”

All it took was a phone call from Park City coach, John Callahan (formerly of The Utah Nordic Alliance, or TUNA) to steer Holt to a career in ski coaching in 1999. Fresh out of college and new in town, Holt needed a job, so she spent the winter as Callahan’s assistant coaching the high-school-age competition team the following season.

After three years in Park City, Holt moved back to Sun Valley, coaching there for five years, then put in a year in Vancouver, British Columbia, as the Hollyburn Ski Team head coach. Back in Utah, she took a position as University of Utah assistant coach and signed a joint contract with the USST as an assistant development coach. Holt is now heading into her fourth year as Utah’s head coach.

The lifestyle appears to agree with Holt, who said she likes her job for

“the variety! Getting outside and not sitting at a desk all day. Watching young people develop into fantastic human beings. The challenge of managing team dynamics.”

Holt’s impact on the men and women she coaches goes beyond the management of training and racing.

“I believe that involvement with Nordic skiing creates great humans,” she said. “I hope that young skiers who I am involved with learn how to mix the necessary intensity of the sport with some humor.”

Holt knows she has a great situation in her position at Utah. She loves her job and her confidence demonstrates that she is at the top of her game. After finishing second at NCAA Championships for the last three years, Holt is focused on winning in 2014. She believes that college skiing has a place in the pipeline of U.S. skiing.

“College programs are well-funded and we have access to a tremendous amount of support for our athletes,” she said. “Additionally, nearly every coach in this country has come through a college skiing program, so if nothing else, we are feeding the coaching system.”

Holt sees herself as a role model for her athletes, but also for women looking at coaching as a career option. At Utah, she is the only woman who is a head coach of a men’s team at a university where many men serve as head coaches of women’s teams.

“I’d like to think that my team’s success serves as proof that women can be successful as ski coaches, no matter which gender they are working with,” she said.

Holt has dedicated herself to her career and sees herself as “one of the women who is leaning in to the profession and the industry,” she said. “I have worked hard and pushed hard to get to this position.”

She is a self-proclaimed “true fan of American nordic skiing” and a “constant advocate of college skiing.” Finally, Holt believes that “women coaches are on par with the male coaches in the U.S. – there just aren’t enough of them!”

Becky Woods

Head Nordic Coach, Bates College, 20 years

“Performance and success correlate with one another! If I can help my athletes perform well and find success in ski racing this will translate into their personal lives as well. It is about building confidence, finding self-assurance, and believing in your abilities.” – Becky Woods

Bates head coach Becky Woods (r) with one of her former athletes, Sylvan Ellefson, who graduated in 2009, and her daughters Kaelyn and Emma at the World Cup sprints last December in Quebec City. (Courtesy photo)

The head men’s and women’s nordic coach at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, for the last two decades, Becky Woods can be described as a quiet force. She has built the team into a reputable program over the years and has become a much-beloved coach by her athletes.

Woods, who skied for Bates and graduated in 1989, began her career as an assistant coach on weekends, where she helped out on the Carnival circuit. After a stint in coaching juniors of various ages in Colorado, she returned to Maine, where she was asked to come back to Bates as head coach.

While Bates might not be the biggest heavy-hitter on the NCAA circuit, Woods consistently turns out high-quality skiers. Among them are four All-American skiers – Sylvan Ellefson, Justin Easter, David Chamberlain, and Justin Freeman – who have all had a big presence on the U.S. skiing stage.

For Woods, coaching runs in the family as her father, Bob Flynn, coached at Bates for many decades. In the ’70s, he served as head ski coach and also served many years as a coach of baseball and golf. He continues to coach as one of Woods’s assistants in the winter. She called him her mentor: “My Dad ‘Coach Flynn’ was and continues to be someone I go to for advice, support, and a few laughs!”

As a collegiate coach, Woods is highly in-tune with her athletes.

“I think I build some solid relationships with my skiers,” she said. “It is really important for me to get to know the ‘whole’ person so I can help them be the best ski racers they can be.”

She considers herself to be a big part of their lives while they are at Bates. “We consider ourselves a ski family here,” she said. “So in that sense, once you enter the family, you are here to stay!”

The life of a college skier is a demanding one, and Woods is there to help her athletes.

“Balancing their workloads is a challenge,” she said. “Academic schedules combined with daily, consistent training and racing is a tough combination but something that is so worth it.”

Woods is a strong believer in collegiate skiing. “The opportunities that my athletes have are just fantastic and to be a part of that is a privilege.”

She knows she’s preparing her skiers for a career in ski racing beyond college, should they choose this path. “When skiers from Bates are skiing on the World Cup and at the Olympics, it certainly feels like we are having an influence at a level larger than just collegiate skiing.”

While not all Bates skiers continue on to the big leagues beyond college racing, Woods prepares everyone for life. “I think my role as a D1 college coach is to prepare athletes physically, mentally and emotionally for what is to come,” She said.

She said she’s equally proud of “those folks who leave Bates and go on to give back in skiing. It is a true testament to their experiences here at Bates and their passion for skiing.”

Woods credits her husband, Tucker, with whom she has two teenage daughters, for giving her the support she needs to pursue her career. She believes that the women who coach skiing are absolutely on par with their male peers.

“There are fewer women coaching, but I don’t think that speaks to the abilities of the coaches, more to the choices that people make professionally,” she said.

Kristina Trygstad-Saari

Interim Men’s Coach, Dartmouth College, one year

“From both my experiences as an athlete and a coach, it’s important to have women in the mix … as a junior skier, it was always beneficial to be around strong, healthy, positive women. I figure that more perspective and diversity is always better.” – Kristina Trygstad-Saari

Kristina Trygstad-Saari while training with the Bridger Ski Foundation. (Courtesy photo)

Dartmouth grad Kristina Trygstad-Saari (’07) thought she was returning to her alma mater last year to serve as the development-team assistant. In the end, the men’s team needed her more and she wound up coaching that team for the fall and winter.

Trygstad-Saari has been a cross-country ski racer most of her life, and now she wants to give back some of what she learned during her racing career. She had a stellar career as a junior with the Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) in Bozeman, Mont. She holds nine Junior National titles and was sixth at World Juniors, and has competed in World Cup races and skied on the U.S. Development Team.

While studying at Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., Trygstad-Saari decided to take a break from serious skiing. She didn’t stay away long, making a trip to the NCAAs her junior year in 2006. After a few years of racing out of college and an Olympic-team bid, Trygstad-Saari turned her experience toward coaching.

Trygstad-Saari quickly climbed the coaching ladder, returning to BSF to work for her former coach, Dragan Danevski. Coaching J5’s her first year and J2’s and masters the next year, Trygstad-Saari drew from Danevski’s knowledge.

“Once I started coaching for BSF, he was an obvious mentor and a resource,” she said. “He has incredible experience with coaching and athletics.”

It was just a year later that Trygstad-Saari was learning from another revered coach, this time at Dartmouth.

“Coach Cami Thompson-Graves was an exceptional mentor,” she said. “She gave me the freedom to learn through experience while also sharing her own knowledge and experiences to help me along.”

Trygstad-Saari sees herself as a role model for the athletes she works with and feels that she is making a difference through her coaching. She has a big worldview of cross-country skiing, but works on a very “local and personal level,” she said. “I really try to connect with each individual I‘m working with, and if I can have even the smallest positive effect on most of the people I work with, then I’m happy. A little bit can go a long way.”

Trygstad-Saari uses her own experiences as an athlete, ski racer, and student to guide her athletes. “I had a lot of ups and downs in my ski career, especially during college, and I try to share what I learned to help others.”

Having fun and working hard go hand-in-hand for Trygstad-Saari and are the foundation of her coaching method. She reminds her skiers that a love of the sport is just as important as success.

“Creating a healthy environment for training and racing is one of my priorities,” she said. “Providing this on the development levels will only help skiing on the highest levels.”

Trygstad-Saari sees a future for herself in ski coaching and would eventually like to be a head coach of a college team. Her coaching plans are open-ended, but for the time being, she is working at her favorite summer job: catering. That said, come next winter, Trygstad-Saari will be pursuing her passion for coaching cross-country skiing.

June 25, 2013
In Competitive Kickoff, Colby’s New Trails Get Presidential Parade Lap

Colby College President William D. “Bro” Adams skiing at the Quarry Road trail system on Saturday. Photo, flyingpointroad.com

Forget wrangling over curricula and departmental budgets—Colby College President William D. “Bro” Adams had some real problems to contend with this weekend.

Namely, his pair of Peltonen classic skis, which were not cooperating with some tricky snow conditions as Adams made his way around a 2-kilometer loop at the Quarry Road recreation area in Waterville, Maine.

“I think we missed the wax a little bit,” Adams said.

As the ceremonial forerunner for the first-ever collegiate competition at his school’s new home trail system on Saturday, Adams was a Colby White Mule without kick. But the spandex-clad 65-year-old didn’t let that—or a less-than-presidential pair of ski boots—diminish his enthusiasm for the event.

“We had a great time,” he said in phone interview Sunday night. “It was a big-time scene, and seeing all those skiers, and all that excellence, in this little place right nearby—it was really thrilling.”

Adams with Colby ski coach Tracey Cote. Photo, flyingpointroad.com

As for his athletic endeavors on Saturday, Adams’ plight was made somewhat more manageable by the fact that his forerunning companion—Colby ski coach Tracey Cote—was also grappling with some recalcitrant equipment.

She had grabbed the wrong pair of skis, and consequently had even less purchase on the climbs than Adams.

“Bro was just killing me on the uphills,” she said.

Adams, who raced cross-country at his New Hampshire high school, maintained that his pace was not testing Cote’s fitness. Nonetheless, he added, the crowd enjoyed watching.

“There seemed to be pleasure that I was out there—I know it meant a lot to the Colby team,” he said.

Despite the waxing problems, Adams said that the Colby coaching staff did not have to worry about its job security.

“If I was racing, I might have been upset, but I wasn’t racing,” he said.

One thing he would change, however, was his pair of ski boots, which broke as he was putting them on and had to be held together with duct tape.

Cote said that the event organizers also had learned a few lessons from the first set of races run on the new trail system—some snowmaking problems cropped up, as well as a few injuries, including one that left Colby’s top male skier with a broken finger.

“We’re kind of questioning some things, but until you run races, you don’t know where the issues are,” Cote said. “I think things will only get better from here.”

Adams’ performance, though, will be tough to top.

“To have a college president put on a full spandex suit and ski a course is just crazy,” Cote said. “He’s just an amazing guy—I’m really impressed.”

January 28, 2013
New Quarry Road Trails in Maine Will Have “Something for Everyone”

John Morton talks with contractors as the new trails are cut. Photo courtesy of Tracey Cote.

When John Koons was growing up in Waterville, Maine forty years ago, skiing was the thing to do.

“When I was a youngster we had a ski hill,” Koons told FasterSkier. “It was sponsored and run by Colby College. It was an alpine slope, and we had snowmaking and we had lights, and it was really a wonderful place for kids to go.”

But like so many small hills around New England and the rest of the country, the one in Waterville – which had originally opened in 1930 with a rope tow – eventually closed as costs increased and families became more willing to drive to larger, brand-name ski resorts farther away.

That’s a problem, says Koons.

“There hasn’t been anything around since,” he lamented. “And not everybody can afford to go to Sugarloaf, or any place, drive those miles with gas prices the way they are and pay fifty or ninety dollars for an alpine situation.”

As a lifelong nordic skier, Koons had a vision for the site of the city’s old alpine hill on Quarry Road. Even though he grew up alpine skiing on the hill, he didn’t think that reopening the lift was a viable option economically. Instead, he wanted to get kids outside in a different way.

“The reality of it is that operationally you can’t really run much of an alpine slope without a large amount of money and so on, Koons said. “But you could run a very decent nordic trail system with much much lower operational costs.”

He wasn’t the only one who thought that Quarry Road could house great nordic trails. Tracey Cote, the head coach of the nordic team at Colby College in Waterville, had been imagining a trail system down the road from her office for at least a decade.

“We would do our skiwalking out there, we’d also just go out there and run around a lot,” Cote said in an interview this week. “And so in the back of my mind and in the back of [my husband] Pat’s mind, we’ve always thought that this area had really great potential. We had talked about it probably ten years ago.”

When she first had the idea of cutting nordic trails at Quarry Road, Cote said that she had assumed that the project would never happen. But then Koons became interested and began working on the project four years ago. After talking to staff and owners at touring centers all over New England, he began to have an understanding of the economics of building a trail system. Once Koons began working, the project took off.

The college, which had owned the alpine hill, sold the land to the city of Waterville at a rock-bottom price with the requirement that it be developed for recreation; more land was bought later. In all the city now owns 120 acres around the old hill.

“There are so many things – I can’t even explain in words – there are so many things that happened that just seemed really lucky, in a lot of ways,” Cote said. “But it was also through a lot of hard work on John’s part, and the city being interested and wanting to work with this sport and wanting to work with John, and wanting to work with the college.”

Koons never had a doubt that the project would “go,” especially after a fundraising board was formed with other ski enthusiasts. The Friends of Quarry Road is headed by Koons, but includes Cote as well as the several parents of college racers and the city’s head of Parks and Recreation. His vision is of a four-season recreation area, and many of the pieces are already in place. In the winter, there will be both easy trails for recreational skiers and top-of-the line race trails for more serious athletes, as well as snowshoeing. In the summer, he anticipates starting a bike club. Since the venue is on a river, waterfront trails will be developed as well.

“I would say that one of the great appeals of this recreation area is that there is something for everybody,” Koons said.

While he had been optimistic from the start, Koons definitely faced challenges in getting the venue going. He described Waterville as a city that was once well-off, but has experienced a slowdown over the last few decades. The key to getting the cash-strapped municipality on board, he said, was to promise that the ski area would pay for itself once it was up and running.

“One of the first things you have to do is let them know that it’s not going to cost the taxpayers any money,” Koons explained. “You have to demonstrate that you have a viable club and that you could generate funds to put into this from outside city sources. I think that’s very important: this really is its own thing. The city is the overseer and our Parks and Recreation department will provide a couple of people for the winter, but beyond that we will have to supply that from club efforts. I’ve always said from day one that this should be a revenue neutral situation, meaning that we should be able to generate enough revenue to pay for our operations.”

Once Koons had assured city officials that he didn’t anticipate asking for continuing support, they took the unusual step of adding a $250,000 bond issue to the budget to fund the project. The measure passed, and Quarry Road was on its way to becoming a reality.

“[That] is really a tremendous commitment because that’s taxpayer money, no question about it,” Koons said. “So that’s a wonderful commitment.”

After the bond issue passed, the board stayed true to its word and raised almost $500,000 from a number of individual donors. Along with grants from the state Department of Conservation and the Harry Alfond Foundation and support from Colby, the project has received over a million dollars in funds.

“That’s what’s so incredible about this project,” said Cote. “It’s not a college project. Although Colby has supported it, it’s really a community project.”

As of this spring, the site already had five kilometers of ski trails which were well-suited to touring. It hosts a youth ski club started by Cote and her husband Patrick, the Executive Director of the New England Nordic Ski Association; in just a few years, the club has grown to include 82 young skiers.

“It’s really cool to see an area that hasn’t been exposed to skiing all of a sudden get really excited about skiing,” Cote said.

Janice Sibilia, the competitive programs director at the New England Nordic Ski Association, saw the club continuing to grow as the venue gets bigger.

“On a community level, these trails will offer opportunities to youth and recreational skiers, as well as the potential to develop a strong local club,” Sibilia wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier.

Recently, events at Quarry Road have included a winter carnival, paintball biathlon, and snowshoe races. But next year, the site will have even more to offer. The group is in the process of cutting two new two and a half kilometer loops which will be homologated for FIS competitions.

“It was a total blank slate,” Cote said of the area before the trails were cut. “Imagine a sort of small, old alpine hill that has completely grown in, with a lift that was falling down… Somehow, early on we had enough money, or John Koons had raised enough money, that we brought John Morton in and said, here’s the parameters, what would you design?”

Work on the new trails began this fall. Cote said that as she has walked the area she has difficulty visualizing how the trails will ski, but that Morton has assured her that it’s a “really good course.”

Cote was enthusiastic about what the new trails would mean to her team. Although the Colby skiers have been practicing on campus for years, their home trails are not ski specific. Instead, they are running trails groomed by a snowmobile.

“I don’t know that it will revolutionize practice time, but the quality of what we’re going to be on is going to be completely different,” Cote explained. “Now we’ll literally go one minute down the road – you could walk there, but we’ll probably load all the equipment into the bus – and we’re going to be on pistenbully-groomed trails that are homologated to the highest standard so they’re three skate lanes wide .”

The trails will make hosting races easier, too. Until recently, Colby had hosted its Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association races at Sugarloaf, an hour and half north of the school. But as the years went by, the ski area put less and less of an emphasis on racing, and hosting races there became more and more challenging. The last carnival race hosted by Colby was held 15 miles down the road at another new recreation area.

Among other things, Cote was excited that with the new venue so close to campus, more students would come watch college races.

“It’s close enough to our campus that kids can literally walk down from campus and watch,” she said.

Currently, Colby only hosts college races every two years, partly because Waterville is at the extreme Eastern side of the conference and teams don’t like to travel so far. But with homologation now a requirement for FIS races, Cote wondered whether having a certificate would make Waterville a more popular site for college races.

“I think a lot will probably depend on how good our events are when we put them on,” she said. “If we do a really good job then coaches will be more motivated to come here.”

With two separate loops homologated, Cote hoped to be able to host the first college pursuit race. But she also looked at the big picture, and hoped that Quarry Hill would be the site of a variety of elite races, not just those for college athletes. Eastern Cups and even Junior Olympics are in the board’s sights, she explained.

One big plus for the ski area is that it will have an extensive snowmaking system. Since it is situated on a river, there is plenty of water nearby, and Koons believed that it would be the best early-season venue in the East. And if that can bring racers to Waterville, he said, the city would benefit.

“I think it was a selling point when we talked to the city people,” Koons explained. “There’s no question that meets bring in revenue to the city. The numbers are there. And that’s real money for hotels, restaurants, et cetera. And it’s good publicity for the city, which is largely in a pretty depressed area compared to what it used to be.”

Not only would races be good for the city, Cote said, but that they would be good for teams, too.

“Waterville has a bunch of cheap hotels and cheap restaurants, so that’s really good for people coming here,” she said. ” Because it’s on Interstate 95 it’s really accessible.”

Sibilia agreed.

“Of course, having more people drawn to the venue will have a solid impact on the local economy. Situated within close proximity to stores, restaurants and hotels makes it a win win for all parties.”

She was confident that Quarry Road would soon be hosting high-level events, and said that having one more great venue would be a huge benefit for all of New England.

“Having a venue such as this in New England will be a great asset in terms of being able to hold high level races,” Sibilia wrote. “Part of my role as Director of Competition Programming for NENSA is overseeing regional events like our TD Bank Eastern Cup series. The series is designed to provide all levels of athletes with good competition. This is crucial for athlete development but in the global picture, we also need the ability to host National level events to ensure our juniors, U23’s and seniors have the fastest skiers to push them.

“These events also positively affect our coaches education and technical delegate programming by exposing everyone to the top level racers. The Quarry Road trails and nordic center will be able to manage all levels of events.”

For Koons, all of this is great – but he’s less worried about elite racers than he is about members of his own community.

“As far as motivating people, the very high end people such as the cross country teams, I mean, they’re already motivated,” Koons said. “They will go wherever they get the best deal or the best snow product. That’s just a fact of life. They’ll go to Canada, they’ll go to West Yellowstone. They will take care of themselves one way or the other.”

Cote noted that the new trails are very close to downtown and just a hop, skip, and a jump from Waterville’s Boys and Girls Club, which both she and Koons hoped would draw in more community members.

“Reaching out to kids who otherwise would not have this possibility or this experience at all, I think is a huge thing,” Koons said. “Especially with the various wellness programs with local hospitals… whatever you can do to encourage positive, active lifestyle changes for people who otherwise would not have that possibility, then you’ve done a huge service to the town and to the whole area.”

Soon, he hoped, kids would be heading down to Quarry road after school just like he had when he was growing up.

“I think that we’re a full four-season recreation area that happens to have a homologated FIS competition trail,” Koons said. “So I think that’s a pretty good thing.

“Hey, we have winter, it’s here, and not everybody can afford to go to Florida or Arizona for the winter. So you might as well have fun with it. It goes by a lot faster if you can enjoy it.”

October 7, 2011