On the way to a nordic skiing camp, coaches tend to dream up the backdrop for where the big breakthrough you’re after is going to come. You envision the moment where a skier commits to pushing the last interval in an intensity set long before it arrives. You place the moment among the adventures you’re about to have: Put it against the backdrop of a rollerski track with traces of Olympic glory past and future. Point it up a canyon, way out West, in Utah, as if there exists some lost American epic featuring cowboys who rollerski.
At the US Ski Team’s Men’s National Development Group (NDG) Camp in Park City, Utah last week, the setting was there. The moment arrived with those backdrops in the rearview mirror, however. Instead, the key moment for the NDG group came at the end of a cul-de-sac, flush up against a maintenance garage, on a slight uphill. From across a continent and a community, ten of the best developing junior skiers in the United States had aimed high and dry for the Wasatch Range of Utah, and landed square on a strip of suburban pavement which could’ve been ripped from just about any corner of the country.
“Classic Specific Strength is one of our national development themes this year” explained US Development Coach Lizzie Larkins to the group, “and so we’re going to end camp on that note.”
Bryan Fish put the classic set into motion: 8x1min single-stick, 4x1min forced double-pole w/a band around a partner’s waist. 4x1min forced double-pole at speed.
Off the group went, as it had all week. Through a 20k pace project on the Soldier Hollow Rollerski Track. A bounding workout on Park City Mountain Resort. Guided Strength sessions from the US Ski Team’s High Performance Staff. An introduction to the resources on nutrition, psychology, and physiology the US Center for Excellence contained. A sit-down Q & A with the US Ski Team’s J.C. Schoomaker and Swedish National Team’s Emma Ribom. Easy runs and rollerskis thrown in too. It was packed.
Poles clacked. Wheels whooshed. Bryan and Lizzie looked on. Chase High (University of Alaska Anchorage), and myself hopped in for a few, and then joined in from the watch tower too.
And then, the little nods of beckoned athletes and coaches together started. Questions came in. In between spurts, metaphors were thrown, along with hand gesticulations, as skiers searched. In technical terms for shin angle, forward propulsion, hip-initiation, and more. In aesthetic terms, for the delicate, balanced, powerful, beautiful coordination of a classic skier in motion. In simple terms, for growth.
Observed from afar, the whole session could look like a disjointed block party. Helmets and neon shirts (or none at all). Bands and little eccentric circles. But as hoots and hollers started to rise as coaches looked on, and then the skiers joined in, on observing their teammates improvement, the easy, powerful, elastic swing of a superb double-pole transcended to a powerful, if ephemeral, feeling among the group.
An hour flew by. Skiers skied off to dinner. Chase High got in a concise, final word: “that felt like a finale.” “Mission accomplished,” us coaches agreed.
Skier development is ultimately a storytelling exercise. Built on the same units as all narratives. What a development camp offers is a concise chapter. Out there on the pavement behind the Center for Excellence last week in Utah, a national group of skiers found a poetic final line to a chapter coordinated, and shined through during their time together. On night one, Lizzie Larkins highlighted the development themes US Ski and Snowboard is thinking heavily on. During strength sessions throughout the week, US Ski Team Strength Staff fixated on the specific motions which need to be stable and strong for classic skiing. Then, all the group time together, building trust. The goal-setting exercises, and long car rides to training, and a Bryan Fish-supported trip to TopGolf. It all led to the easy swing of a session which offered a fitting final paragraph.
It’s final line is best left to reflection. Sitting on the last night of camp, Lizzie Larkins implored us to share a camp goal we had written on night one which we felt we accomplished. As the skiers shared, my hand scrolled to a line I had been excited by earlier in the week. “Where these skiers go, American skiing goes.”
After a week in Utah, I had seen a glimpse of where it could go with these skiers from California, Alaska, Vermont and all points in between. And with the support of NNF, and the ski community, the narrative of our skier’s development can be an epic.
