New England Nordic Ski Association
The Home of Cross Country Skiing in New England
This coming winter marks the 50th year of the Bill Koch Youth Ski League!
In the lead up to this incredible milestone, we will be sharing community memories, stories, and photos from the league over the years. To kick us off, we’re sharing a recent video from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders about Bill Koch, the man who inspired the league and the league’s philosophy focused on introducing young skiers to the sport through joy, camaraderie, and adventure.
We just kicked off our 2026-27 membership year and hope you’ll join us again for another season!
Our members are a vital part of the NENSA ski community whose support keeps our operations running year-round and ensures we can offer programs and events to skiers of all ages and skill levels. In gratitude for this support, we aim to provide an array of great member benefits including:
Individual Membership Renewal Instructions:
Additional helpful info:
Reach out to membership@nensa.net with any questions and thank you for being an integral part of our community!
NENSA is thrilled to share that Caitlin Patterson has joined our Board of Directors. Caitlin brings a wide range of experience to NENSA and we look forward to working with her.
Caitlin lives in Portland, ME where she works as a structural engineer for Thornton Tomasetti. Caitlin also coaches skiing with Nonstop Nordic in the Portland area, leading the Adult training program and helping with the junior program during the summer. She really enjoys sharing her ski expertise and passion for the sport with the local Maine community through Nonstop Nordic, and now with the whole New England community as a board member of NENSA.
Caitlin is a 2-time Olympian, an 11x US National Champion in cross-country skiing, a 2x US National Champion in skimo, and a 2x Xterra Trail Marathon World Champion.
She grew up in Idaho and Alaska, raced NCAA Division 1 during college at the University of Vermont, and spent 10 years racing for the Craftsbury Green Racing Project elite team in northern Vermont. She was a member of the 2018 and 2022 US Olympic teams, as well as the 2017 US Mountain Running World Championship team.
Beyond cross-country skiing, Caitlin loves backcountry skiing, climbing, all types of biking and generally just being outside with friends. She does occasionally chill and enjoys live music, baking, learning about architecture and engineering, and reading books too.
Please join us in welcoming Caitlin!
Inspired by the stories shared with us during our 30th anniversary, we have created a living archive capture the stories of the people who founded NENSA, those who shaped our history and present moment, and the folks actively creating our future with new visions and ideas built upon our founding principles. This week, we’re sharing reflections from Olympian, former Great Glen BKL Club Leader, and multi-time BKL Festival host, Sue Wemyss.
I moved back to New England in 1992 and started coaching xc in the Mountain Valley, Maine public school system. I was present at that meeting at Stratton where NENSA was founded. I moved from Rumford to the Gorham, NH area in 2001, started working at Great Glen Trails, including helping out with the BKL Club that met there on Sundays. When the main parent leader moved away, I took over leadership of the Great Glen BKL Club. This was in the early 2000’s. Our club was very recreational skiing-oriented, as opposed to being race-oriented. But most years I’d convince some families to go to the New England BKL Festival. While the kids were “newbies” when it came to racing, I felt that their coming to the Festival, seeing and meeting all these other kids that loved to do this same activity that they did, and taking part in the fun activities of the Festival, was really worthwhile. It connected us with the larger community of New England skiers, a community I have cherished.
I love the sport of cross country! And I love the people I have met through skiing. I think there’s a very strong bond between xc skiers through our love of being outdoors in nature, and gliding on snow. My skiing roots are in New England, but I feel this bond much further afield–strong connections with skiers throughout the country and throughout the international ski community as well. (I’ve just returned from a cross-the-country road trip to ski new places. A couple highlights from this trip were seeing and spending time with a fellow Olympian in California, and two fellow Canadians who I raced with in the 1980s!)
Great Glen hosted the New England BKL Festival for the first time in 2012. I was the Event Director. It was a lot of work and I’m not an experienced event director by any means! I lost lots of sleep over the months leading up to it, and put in lots of time and effort. But it was all so worthwhile when that weekend arrived and over 600 kids and their families came to Great Glen and enjoyed what we had to offer. I remember looking out from the lodge and seeing hundreds of kids and their families, playing on the snow–skiing, tubing, horsing around, having fun. It was the happiest of all my days working at Great Glen, and I had many, many happy days there in my job as the Ski School Director.
NENSA provides opportunities to be a part of a larger ski community and share the enjoyment of cross country skiing.
The last Saturday in March saw a fun morning of relay racing with skiers from BKL to Masters representing clubs from across New England all coming together for this celebratory end-of-season Club Championship event.
Following the relay races, everyone gathered to share a tasty barbecue meal and acknowledge the top relay teams as well as the season-long racers who finished on top in the Zak, Marathon & Club Cup series.
Congratulations to everyone who came out to race the relays and throughout the whole season! We also want to extend a huge thank you to the Craftsbury Outdoor Center for hosting and to Allagash Brewing and Jasper Hill for providing awesome end-of-season prizes in the form of chalices and cheese.
Keep scrolling to relive relay day through photos.
