On Saturday morning, while driving to Stratton, I drove by Jessie Diggins doing her final interval workout before flying to Europe to begin her World Cup season. Many of the athletes driving to the Youth Community Day also got an early morning glimpse of Jessie – it was a motivating way to start the morning!
Our first ever Youth Community felt like a huge success. We had athletes in attendance from across the Southern and Central Vermont regions and cold weather was a perfect way to get excited for winter. After a beautiful hike up to Mid Mountain Lodge, we hiked back down to the school for lunch and a presentation on the opportunities that youth skiers have after graduating from BKL. The afternoon was spent in the air awareness center and on roller skis. It was the first time on roller skis for a third of the athletes in attendance, which was cause for celebration at the end of the day.
This event felt really meaningful and we at NENSA would love to hold more events like this in the future. The middle school audience is a particular age group that we like to engage with because it is a time of such change for young people and we’d like to encourage as many people as possible to stay in the sport of nordic skiing.
