A version of this article will appear in the forthcoming Cross-Country Ski Magazine, 45.1
By: Ben Theyerl
John Caldwell didn’t exactly stand up in Faneuil Hall and shout, ‘Give me klister, or give me death,’ but it was something close.
The old issues of taxation and representation flared in the frozen world of cross country skiing following the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. In Norway that year, US Skiing surprised itself. After a decade-long Olympic drought, the Alpine Team netted four medals. For the Cross Country team though, the Games were a nadir. The then US Ski Association (now US Ski and Snowboard, USSS) faced budget cuts, and now had a direction to aim them. Rumors of the national association dropping the Cross Country discipline entirely started to creep.
New Englanders cradled another revolution. Instead of looking to Boston harbor though, they turned up to the Green Mountains of Vermont. The region had produced a host of world-class skiers a generation earlier including Martha Rockwell, Tim Caldwell, and Bill Koch, a 1976 Olympic silver medalist. John Caldwell and a cadre of coaches felt they had never lost the blueprint.
“Those coaches stubbornly believed that ‘yes, you can produce world championship medalists right here,’” says Fred Griffin, a Vermont coach who was present at 1995 Stratton Mountain School meeting where the articles of incorporation (or independence if you like) were signed for the new New England Nordic Ski Association, NENSA.
At its outset, NENSA had a barebones directive. Organize races, then take the revenue from those races, and re-invest them in New England, rather than sending them to Utah. Griffin, who would serve as the organization’s first Executive Director, saw the historic rhythm playing out, “the conversation turned from head taxes to declarations on the rights of all skiers pretty quickly.”
John Caldwell and his nephew Zach Caldwell, hired as NENSA’s Program Director, took stock of the region. New England didn’t lack races. Those races though, lacked direction. Griffin remembers, “There was Masters racers tucked in pockets and the Bill Koch League (BKL) was moving on its own…high school racing though, was a wasp’s nest!”
John Caldwell was already a grizzled veteran of the ongoing debates: “I want us to think big, BIG picture…not argue about whether the U14s should race 2k or 3k, or whether the season should end on March 3rd or March 4th” he wrote to his new Board of Directors in the Fall of 1995 – a group containing Caldwell, Griffin, Scottie Eliasson (Ford Sayre), Joe Walsh (Ford Sayre), and Peter Hendel (Holderness).
The solution was to organize a common touchpoint where whole region could race together at onc. It would also regularize Junior Olympic (now Junior Nationals, JNs) qualifying. NENSA called the new series the Eastern Cup.
“Early on, [the Eastern Cup] imparted that there were entire worlds beyond high school skiing” says Peter Hendel, the last remaining NENSA founder still serving as a NENSA Board Member today. “You could go to [JNs] in Alaska, or the Olympics, or just up to Maine for a weekend, but it all branched out from the Eastern Cup.”
Zach Caldwell, keeping the books, noted that there was enough revenue coming in from the Eastern Cup races to start re-investing in programs beyond races. NENSA camps, clinics, and teams emerged. Existing programs, namely the BKL, Eastern High School Championships and J2 (now U16) Championships, were folded in. Skiers formed clubs, and through NENSA, those clubs started working with other clubs. Emerging talents spoke to the belief that the resources for producing world-class skiers existed in the forests and fields of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Kris Freeman, Liz Stephen, Ida Sargent, and Andy Newell highlighted a first generation of skiers who were distinctly NENSA skiers.
Thirty years on, NENSA is the only independent regional sport development organization in American cross country skiing. Last year, around 9,000 skiers participated in one of NENSA’s year-round races, clinics or camps. The NENSA program has grown to encompass a lifetime of skiing, from the Bill Koch Youth League all the way through to Masters community races.
Throughout its history, the NENSA approach to athlete development has relied on a simple mechanism. With New England’s clubs enmeshed into one community, there is a multiplier effect on the coaching and racing resources a skier interacts with throughout their development. Julia Kern, for instance, from suburban Boston, not only received support from her home club Cambridge Sports Union, but traversed Dartmouth College, Stratton Mountain School T2, and a whole host of regional club coach support throughout her development with NENSA. Current World Cup podiumist Ben Ogden, from Landgrove, Vermont, has a similar trajectory. The pair are the latest speaking to a proven approach. New England forms one of US Skiing’s ten divisions nation-wide, and yet, has accounted for one in three of the Olympians who have represented the USA in cross country skiing this century.
When asked what those early ideals of grassroots athlete development have turned into on snow, most in the NENSA community cite one unique fixture of the annual New England ski calendar – the Bill Koch League (BKL) Festival. The capstone to NENSA’s youth program, the Festival has grown to annually include around 600 skiers aged 6-14 for two days of skiing, racing, costumes, and face paint. Skiers are regularly seen skirting their start times to make snow cones with new friends from two states away. Among the throngs of people, the festival’s namesake Bill Koch, along with his wife Kate, stand with quiet smiles ready to sign any and all hats, gloves, and race bibs. 50 years on from Koch’s Olympic medal, and 30 years on from the revolution his Coach John Caldwell helped start, generations of New England skiers have all gone through the BKL Festival as a rite of passage and emerged with a common ethos dipped in winter joy.
“My first couple of years on the job, John Caldwell would say, ‘don’t answer any phone call from a Utah area code,’” says Fred Griffin. “Tell them Craftsbury [Vermont] doesn’t really have phone service, sorry.” Griffin reflects on this on a hot July summer day at the end of a Craftsbury NENSA Regional Development Group (RDG) Camp where thirty high schoolers from Bangor to Burlington have just completed a rollerski sprint simulation workout together. In 2025 Craftsbury does, indeed, have phone service (or at least, WiFi). NENSA’s relationship to USSS too, is more in touch, symbiotic even, then in those early years. “The focus hasn’t changed though,” says Griffin, “it’s all about the kids – they’re here making new friends, will go for a swim now, and push each other on the same trails this winter.” Given NENSA’s history, odds are that one of them may push on to the Olympics. Many more to all the trails that skiing blazes for a person, out in the winter snow and beyond it.
