When I ask longtime Holderness coach Peter Hendel what has kept him involved with NENSA through the entire 30 years of our existence, he provides the pitch perfect answer, “The kids. The motivation has always been the kids, even if I enjoy the administrative stuff.”
The kids, the kids, and admin. It’s proved to be a perfect three-beat for Hendel to waltz through thirty years in the ski community, in what amounts to a momentous contribution to the sport. Alongside John Caldwell, Scottie Eliassen, Joe Walsh, and Fred Griffin, Hendel founded NENSA in 1995. Thirty years in, he has never left his position advising the organization as a member of our Board of Directors.
That accomplishment is just a humble note in his contributions to the NENSA community. Hendel succeeded Steve Gaskill as coach at the Holderness School in the early 1990s while managing Math teaching duties, and quickly took to developing the sport. He found another math teacher, a like-minded, ambitious colleague in John Caldwell, “JC” as he continuously refers to him, and kindled the spark which led to NENSA’s formation in the early 1990s.
“There was a build towards the idea of NENSA,” says Hendel when I caught up with him. “We had decided a few years earlier to start the J2, now U16, Championships because us coaches felt there wasn’t a good pipeline to keep skiers active for the entire ski season.”
Hendel was athlete-minded then, and is now, saying that “the transition between Middle School and High School skiing made that a natural point where we were spending a lot of energy thinking about what would keep skiers involved in the sport. I was leading the Junior Olympics trip at the time, and thought it was a little ridiculous we were sending skiers across the country at that age to validate that they were competitive. Performance at that age is not predictive of future performance.”
When the then US Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) experienced budget cuts following the 1994 Olympics, Caldwell started to move fast on incorporating an organization that would keep membership revenue in the East, rather than sending it out West.
“USSA at the time had swings from wanting a centralized national approach to a decentralized approach for skier development. Having been through many of those swings, JC was the most willing of us to put forward that we could stop being caught in those philosophy changes if we had a clear, defined, successful approach of our own.”
That approach became NENSA. Hendel signed the articles of incorporation and agreed to take on some Treasurer duties. Thirty years later, he is still keeping the books in every sense of the word.
Working with Peter is perfectly perched position. A question on operating budgets is liable to become a rich history lesson. Those at NENSA are all the luckier for it.
“It’s been slow and steady progress,” he says on the progression of NENSA to the active community it is today. “From my perspective, I distinctly remember when Volvo agreed to a sponsorship grant in 1996. It was the moment of relief. We, and mostly our employee at the time, [Zach Caldwell], went from the focus having to be on keeping this fledgling organization solvent to running ski programming.”
Hendel also marks out that shift as one which allowed creativity to flow towards athlete development. “[Holderness] had a strong team in 1997…and we were up at Sugarloaf for the first JNQ,” he relays. “We hadn’t yet convinced the college teams that it worth racing with the juniors like we do at Eastern Cups today, so they started before the NENSA field, but they were in the same race, and same course. I was standing with Bud Fisher (retired Williams College coach) and Cory Schwartz (retired University of New Hampshire Coach) when the Holderness girls passed. I asked Bud, ‘how do they look?’ And he goes, “like they’re beating our college girls!” They did, and Cory went, ‘it’s healthy that they see this,’ and I mark that as a beginning where we came around to the idea that athletes in the same field meant they all pushed and developed at their own pace.”
Through fads, philosophies, and lots of ideas tried and scraped, Hendel remains committed to the idea that a healthy NENSA means a healthy ski community in New England:
“I think there is a wonderful sense of community and that wasn’t always present thirty years ago today, I do feel that skiing in New England is stronger than it has ever been, and I think that is because of the community belief in NENSA.” – Peter Hendel
As for Hendel, he continues to dance along with the organization he has humbly served for thirty years. Last weekend, in preparation for the Cheri Walsh Memorial at Holderness School next weekend, he sent a video of the snowmaking operations, along with a text “I took a ski around the 2.5 k, and the snowmaking looks awesome. Tremendous amount accomplished.”
When this Eastern Cup season kicks off next weekend, we might all be able to echo the same about the steady, hard-working coach who has been part of it for over thirty years; Peter Hendel.
