Taking in the final day of the Henchey Memorial Eastern Cup from the timing shed at Craftsbury Outdoor Center, NENSA’s Mackenzie Rizio and Katharine Call echoed the refrain of their old Stratton Mountain School coach Sverre Caldwell:
“It’s all practice, until the Olympics.”
The refrain came back around a couple of different verses. One was from Mackenzie, who was pressed into service as our announcer for the Craftsbury weekend. One was about the Olympics. Katharine’s brother Ben was set to start the Olympic Classic Sprint the next day. On the former, Mackenzie crushed it. On the latter, Ben Ogden won a silver medal and became the first man to win an Olympic medal since fellow New Englander Bill Koch fifty years ago.
It was all practice, until the Olympics. For Ben Ogden, when the first clause gave way to the second in Italy, he earned a silver medal. In the long trail of that first clause though, was “practice.” And for Ben, that practice was everything back here. BKL Festival costume relays, EHS, U16s, and Junior Nationals too. It was NENSA. In his silver medal, the dream which a New England skiing community had worked on over the past half century was realized. But also in an instant, nothing changed at all.
There was still winter. And a good winter too. And for the NENSA community, there was a still a race to be run, literally.
In the time between Bill Koch being the last Vermonter to win a cross country Olympic medal and Ben Ogden being the last Vermonter to win a cross country Olympic medal, there was the Henchey Memorial Eastern Cup at Craftsbury, and the Oak Hill Eastern Cup too.
Any skier will tell you that “practice” has a couple of different meanings. For many skiers right now, it’s the time each day they get together each day. Practice is what comes between the races. Where the pressure is off, and the focus is on events down the line. During practice, you grow stronger to meet the challenge.
In that, is the duel-meaning. Practice as a ritual you return to. Same time, same place. For the NENSA community, the practice we return to each year is the Eastern Cup.
No matter how you splice it – as a noun, verb, adverb, or adjective – “practice” is something filled with humans doing things together. And deconstructing it that way illuminates the contribution of all of us to the ritual. The practice of the Eastern Cup over the past two weeks has required thousands of people who love a sport often hidden away in frozen pockets of the world to go to a certain place, at a certain time, with a certain task, and to do so together. Racers, coaches, volunteers, timers, parents, spectators, shuttle drivers, coffee-makers and SKIERS. In the process, we’ve all accomplished nothing-less than changing a season. Shown that winter can be warm. Enough people with their practice in the same direction can make you shed a few layers.
As Sverre alludes to in his aphorism, practice is always a path looking way down the trail. The Eastern Cup has always been a practice which has looked to make his old saying a vivid chorus for our community. In the past week, with one of his former skiers, it rang true.
With the Eastern Cup, the practice is the point. For Ben O., for Sverre, you, me, and all of us combined. For NENSA. Thank you to everyone who has worked to make sure it’s all practice, until the Olympics.
