On Saturday evening in Dublin, NH Sverre Caldwell kept coming back to one word, until it became definitional. “I’m all about ‘progressions,’” he said.
Caldwell was speaking to his peers, a coach addressing a group of around fifty coaches at the 2025 NENSA Fall Coaches Conference. Caldwell was also speaking as a patron, of sorts. Not in the strict sense of providing the financial resources to keep things going. Instead, in a much harder to define, lasting way. NENSA asked Sverre Caldwell to be our Coaches Conference keynote speaker because we simply looked around for the best coaching experience to speak to the essential task of building a community. And whereas in the past, those coaches may have come far flung – from national US Skiing headquarters out West, or draped in a Scandinavian accent from overseas – we looked around and found the best source of community experience, pride, and love of skiing in a coach with a broad smile, and a ready anecdote, in Stratton, Vermont. In NENSA’s progression of running close to the ground while shooting to be the best in the world, there has always been Sverre.
If Caldwell underlined anything for us, it was that its progressions all the way down. From defining an individual athlete’s relationship with the sport as one which they were simply trying to get better towards a goal, to pushing a community to add support for athletes to do that on the highest level of the sport, the idea that going forward always meant departing from a step already taken never left the conversation.
Framed in that way, the 2025 NENSA Fall Coaches Conference looked like a vital community progression too. Last weekend’s gathering was the largest annual NENSA Conference of the sort in recent memory, with nearly 80 regional coaches. The Conference reinforced a wonderful truth, which is that like any community, the ski community is a gathering for all kinds of humans, with all the talents that humans have. Technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, and the lived experience of practicing our sport were all on display. True to the idea of progression, we’re coming away from NENSA looking to understand what our next steps will be to such an enthusiastic reception. Participants can look forward to more coffee and donuts, and less presentation time overlaps next year. What more so though, we’re coming away from last weekend though, is a sense of gratitude. Ultimately Sverre’s reflections Saturday night on a long, successful career boiled down to something quite humble. Try and make the community you enter a little better than you found it. The echoes from our presenters, engaged coaches, and the community it summed up to, indicate that NENSA is following the old headmaster’s (or rather…intentionally not a headmaster a ski coach instead) advice.
BKL Parent Leaders and Coaches Recap
Dr. Sharon Henry opened the Bill Koch Track with a powerful reminder that balance is everything, a theme that resonated throughout the entire day. In many ways, balance lies at the heart of Bill Koch League coaching: finding equilibrium between fun and fundamentals, challenge and support, teaching and learning.
Our morning sessions focused on the foundations of balance and how to effectively teach technique to BKL skiers. Coaches shared creative games, progressions, and approaches that have worked in their own clubs, sparking great discussion and new ideas to bring into the winter season.
After lunch, the conversation shifted toward life transitions and the parallels we see in sport. Lizzie Larkins encouraged us to consider the “human side” of coaching and how we can support athletes through the many changes that occur during the BKL years and beyond.
Next, Jay Davis from Ford Sayre BKL shared how his club balances their event offerings, combining adventure, fun, and community through both internal gatherings and open events. This led to thoughtful discussion around the BKL philosophy, the balance of meeting children where they are, and strategies for managing groups that may feel “unbalanced” in energy, skill, or dynamics on any given day.
The day closed with a shared sense of inspiration and collaboration. Coaches, presenters, and NENSA staff alike left with new ideas, renewed motivation, and a deeper appreciation for the balance that defines our work and community. Building on the momentum of last year’s BKL Symposium, this year’s offering truly showcased the collective energy and creativity that make the BKL community so special.
Junior/High School/College Coaches Recap
When NENSA’s Staff met with our Coach Development committee to gain some feedback on the agenda for the 2025 Conference, they framed their feedback in participatory terms. The directive was something like: “Speakers are great, but we have a bunch of coaches in a room together like we never do, so let’s talk about skiing!”
What we set out to do then, was just that. It all came together in the Outing Club late Saturday afternoon, with Alex Jospe, Adam Terko, and Kathy Maddock leading a highly participatory session talking about V1, V2, and Double-poling, along with how they use video in their training. US Ski and Snowboard Sport Development Director Bryan Fish stood by at the ready to lend us his humble, but very deep well of coaching knowledge as coaches from across the region chimed in. The session reached its stated goal, but also matched the frequency of our conference offerings with the way we so often implore coaches to coach in New England. Instead of elevating one approach over the other, let’s all speak to each other on the same level. Competitive, sure, but collegial too.
Alex, Adam, and Kathy’s session came late in the afternoon, but felt like the end of a progression which began in the morning with me (Ben) presenting on where our approach as a New England community is at the moment. To outlay that we want local experts to develop so they multiply our regional efforts in verbal or written terms, is to a certain extent, my job, but to see it come together in some of the great resources we have from different ski communities was a great progression to the day.
In the interim, we also had individual presentations from Zach Caldwell on ski service philosophy, and a highly-detailed, intricate presentation on athlete balance from Dr. Sharon Henry. Those sessions both saw high-levels of engagement from the audience, and spurred the overarching thought that among an audience of high school coaches, junior club coaches, and college coaches, there is an appetite for the expertise of skills coaches interact with everyday – waxing, ski equipment, and physiology – but never a focused area to step into community resources around them. So, yes, we got one sampling of that Saturday, but the hope is that it spurs the development of ongoing coach resource development for the NENSA community.
The other highlight of the weekend came on Sunday, when Bryan Fish led a L100 assessment with 7 coaches, and nearly as many there for non-certification exposure to the national curriculum. For all the complexities of interacting systems with our regional and national sport education, the end result is that we are building a shared vocabulary for skiers to progress through the very beginnings of their journeys in the sport.
The diversity and experience (and diversity of experience) were all fundamental to the experience of the Coaches Conference this year, and we’ll look forward to developing that as this Conference gains momentum once again.
Resources Forthcoming
NENSA is currently compiling slides, audio, and video from Saturday to share with our members on a new coach resource webpage. Stay tuned!
Post-Event Survey
Please help us build off this year’s program by taking our post-event survey below!
