Kait Miller

NENSA is celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2025. As part of the occasion, we’re gathering reflections from skiers across New England on the people, moments, and values which have defined the NENSA community. This week, we are featuring Farmington Area Ski Team (FAST) coach, Tony Ramsey.

What has skiing in New England meant to your life or your community?

TR: Coaching has been the best! Fred Griffin gave a clinic session about 20 years ago where he stated, “it’s not enough to be better than your athletes… you have to be working on your OWN game, too!” This has been the core of my coaching, especially as I came to skiing late (in my 20’s) and missed a lot of the rapid early-age learning that I see happen in the young skiers every year. In the early spring I am the fittest of any time of year, and while enjoying longer days and the warmth of spring, lament the loss of good daily skiing.

Can you share a moment that embodies the spirit of New England skiing?

TR: Skiing is JOY. Happy kids being outside and active in winter… Quarry Road hosts a relay race every February that we attend, dressed Hawaiian and whatever other costume quirks pop up. The joy is in being goofy together more than any results could give.

What does NENSA mean to you?

TR: Winter Friends! People I rarely see for 9 months of the year, we catch up as we cross paths on the trails, ski together, or meet in the lodge.

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We want to hear from you! Send in your NENSA 30th reflections using this form HERE.

NENSA is celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2025. As part of the occasion, we’re gathering reflections from skiers across New England on the people, moments, and values which have defined the NENSA community. This week, we are featuring Technical Delegate, Ted Hall.

Your connections to NENSA and years involved?

Ted Hall (TH): I first got involved with NENSA when our two sons started with BKL in southern NH and we attended the BKL Festival at Titcomb in the late 90’s. When we moved to Maine in 2005, I got involved and became a district chair and was co-chair of the BKL Festival that was originally supposed to be held at Pineland Farms but was moved to Stark’s Hill in Fryeburg. Our family continued membership in NENSA as our sons raced in high school and college. Now, I am a TD and work at various races across New England.

What has skiing in New England meant to your life or your community?

TH: The cross country skiing community in New England is very close. Every spring, I realize that I won’t be seeing my skiing friends for several months, but once the snow flies, I can count on running into someone I know wherever I ski in the northeast. I love to ski on groomed trails and in the backcountry. One of the things I love about Nordic skiing is that you can be a spectator and a skier at the same time, moving around the course on your skis and testing the course once the race has been completed.

What does NENSA mean to you?

TH: I am so thankful for all of the wonderful people I have met over the years in all aspects of what NENSA does.

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We want to hear from you! Send in your NENSA 30th reflections using this form HERE.

NENSA is celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2025. As part of the occasion, we’re gathering reflections from skiers across New England on the people, moments, and values which have defined the NENSA community. This week, we are featuring NENSA Board Member & Ford Sayre Coach, Katharine Call (Ogden).

Your connections to NENSA and years involved.

Katharine Call (KC): I grew up skiing for a NENSA club (West River BKL), and spent all year anticipating the NENSA BKL festival. As I developed as a ski racer, I continued to ski race in New England through high school (SMS) and college (Dartmouth) and then the SMS pro team. I have now been on the NENSA board for 3 years as well, and do some intermittent coaching at Ford Sayre.

Can you share a moment that embodies the spirit of New England skiing?

KC: To answer this question both literally and then a little bit abstractly I’m going to call on a memory from 2013 junior nationals. I was a second year u16 and we were racing in Fairbanks Alaska. One of the other girls on the team had brought blue and green fabric spray paint and white t shirts. We went out on the porch of the hotel in freezing Alaska weather and spray painted these crazy graffiti-style neon colored shirts, boldly proclaiming that we were New England girls.

There’s the obvious aspect of this story that shows New England ski spirit, of course. That particular group of girls had so much of the spirit of New England skiing that we wore our home-made shirts for every occasion all week, embracing the team colors of neon blue and green with arguably too much reckless abandon for the rules of fashion.

To get a little less literal, I think that spray painting those t shirts on the deck of a Fairbanks motel was pretty emblematic of my motivations for skiing in general. It may be sacrilege to admit this here but I’ve never been one of those people with a deep-seated love of the sport. And yet, here I am, cross country skiing has been an ongoing passion project for me in various ways for almost three decades.

I remember talking to teammates on the plane to the first world cups in Ruka and hearing them say how excited they were to finally ski on snow. I’d sit there quietly because I couldn’t really relate. I wasn’t waiting in anticipation anymore, I was already happy because I’d just been excited to hang out with all of them again. It was never about the skiing for me. I liked competing, sure. But mostly I liked belonging to a community that felt wholly accepting of me.

I wore that spray painted shirt around all the time after I got home from Fairbanks nationals, reveling in the belonging (and in how awesome of a look I somewhat mistakenly thought it was). New England skiing sucked me in for life, not because I am obsessed with striding and gliding and the feel of a ski on corduroy. All of that is fine enough, but it’s made 100 times better by the people I’ve gotten to do it with.

Every instance I can think of where I got to feel the love of my ski community was orchestrated by NENSA. I was raised treating the night before leaving for the BKL festival like a Christmas Eve and I once cried myself to sleep over missing an Eastern Cup when I had a cold. Junior Nationals was the highlight of my high school social calendar. When I was racing World Cup but failed to qualify for the Olympics, an Eastern Cup in Lake Placid while all my teammates were in Beijing was what got me out of the funk and brought back the love of the sport.

Now that I’m on the board of directors at NENSA I realize it’s no accident that these events were always so fun and welcoming. NENSA staff works tirelessly to make sure that the whole New England ski community continues to be able to experience the magic of community, in the same way I got to.

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We want to hear from you! Send in your NENSA 30th reflections using this form HERE.

NENSA is celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2025. As part of the occasion, we’re gathering reflections from skiers across New England on the people, moments, and values which have defined the NENSA community. This week, we are featuring EMXC athlete, Leigh Niedeck.

Your connections to NENSA and years involved.

Leigh Niedeck (LN): I’ve been involved with NENSA for too many years to count! Through both local and regional racing. I started participating in NENSA events as a BLK skiier – running and shuffling around a loop to be rewarded with a HUGE lillipop – and have continued through high school, racing in Eastern Cups, regional championships, and Nationals. NENSA has been a huge part of my development as a skier — it’s connected me to a wider community beyond my team, given me a sense of belonging in New England skiing, and shown me how much passion and dedication exist in this sport.

What has skiing in New England meant to your life or your community? What does it mean to you to be a cross-country skier from New England?

LN: Being a cross-country skier from New England means being shaped by both the beauty and the toughness of this place. The sport reflects the region itself: unpredictable, gritty, and full of quiet resilience. We train through freezing mornings, icy rain, and deep snow, when most people would rather stay inside; or in my case, rollerskiing in Eastern Mass. during the middle of the winter! The cold doesn’t scare us; it builds us. Every winter, the trails become a second home — lined with birch trees, rolling hills, and the sound of skis cutting through crusty snow.Whether at small local races or big regional ones, there’s always this shared sense of belonging — of people who love winter and the challenge it brings.

For me, skiing in New England has become more than just a sport — it’s a way of life. It’s taught me discipline, patience, and how to find joy in discomfort. It’s given me a community that understands what it means to show up, even when conditions are far from perfect. It has taught me adaptation; living a mile out of Boston, our terrain and luck with snow rather lacks, but this has taught me how to be more resourceful with where and what i do for workouts.

To be a New England skier is to carry that mindset everywhere: that progress is earned in the toughest conditions, and that beauty often hides beneath the frost.

Can you share a moment that embodies the spirit of New England skiing?

LN: It was one of those perfect late-March weekends — Southern Vermont had just been hit with a fresh wave of snow, ideal for a mix of adventure and jib skiing. We hopped out of the car, buzzing with excitement, and waxed up our classic skis. The sun sat low in the sky, casting that golden shimmer that makes the snow look like it’s been dusted with fairy-tale sparkles.

After a few loops on the trails, we reached the top of Wild Wings Ski Center. The descent back to the lodge was one of my favorites — a winding downhill with sharp turns, surprise jumps tucked behind corners, and a long runout perfect for a big hockey stop to spray your friends with snow. But that day, instead of rushing down, we decided to explore.

There were three other athletes and a coach with me, all of us trenching between trails, searching for a hidden patch of untouched powder to launch off. When we finally spotted a line, I unstrapped my poles to avoid snapping them and pushed off. I carved through the powder, snow flying up around me, heart pounding. I didn’t catch huge air, but I got that unmistakable rush — the blend of adrenaline and joy that only Nordic skiing can bring when the snow is perfect, the air is crisp, and you’re surrounded by friends who love it as much as you do.

What does NENSA mean to you?

LN: NENSA is where my love for cross country skiing began—a community that embodies joy, inclusivity, and a shared passion for getting outside and connecting through the skiing.

NENSA is celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2025. As part of the occasion, we’re gathering reflections from skiers across New England on the people, moments, and values which have defined the NENSA community. This week, we are featuring SMS-t2 Head Coach, Colin Rodgers.

Your connections to NENSA and years involved.

Colin Rodgers (CR): I can honestly say that I have been involved with NENSA my entire life!

I was born in Burlington and raised in NW VT- Westford! My parents, Dale and Peggy, helped organize the NWVT BKL program while my brother Chris and I grew up in Chittenden County. We skied A LOT out our back door in Westford, at the local Westford Elementary School Trails, at Catamount Family Ctr, Smuggler’s Notch XC Ski Touring Ctr and the Ethan Allen Firing Range in Jericho. My dad helped to lead the US Biathlon program from 1984-88 so I literally grew up on skis and was around amazing athletes when I was quite young. I have simply, always, loved to ski!

In high school I raced for Essex High School and at Holderness School in Plymouth, NH. During those years I was able to represent New England at the Jr National Ski Championships and went on to race internationally as a Jr and U23 at U18 Scandinavian Jr Championships in Sundsvall, SWE (1999), Szklarska poreba, POL (2001) and Soldier Hollow, UT (2004).

From 2000-04 I was a panther at Middlebury College and then skied post collegiately at Maine Winter Sports Ctr 2004-06 and for the Sun Valley Ski Ed Foundation Gold Team 2006-2011.

In the spring of 2011 I turned 30 years old and although I loved competing and had ~15 World Cup starts in North America and Scandinavia, I came to the realization that I needed to be faster… way faster, if I wanted to reach my international goals so… instead of continuing to race myself I poured all of my efforts into coaching the Gold Team. I pushed hard coaching in Sun Valley, and we had some great athletes come through the program like Morgan Arritola, Simi Hamilton, Miles Havlick, Matt Gelso, Kevin Bolger and Mikey Sinnott just to name a few. In 2016, I was excited by a challenge to come back to VT and coach Juniors at the Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield, VT and it became a new era for me. Coaching at the high school level was so much more about growing good kids who learn about life through dedication to sport. The ultimate goal was to teach a lifestyle that was going to take them far on down the road. In the process we churned out some fast skiers along the way and I am proud of all of the work and fun we had at GMVS!

This past spring I took a leap, and decided to get back to coaching some of our top Sr athletes heading into Milan-Cortina 2026! It has been an inspiration to now be helping lead the SMS-t2 program out of Stratton Mtn, VT and I feel so fortunate for all of the learning opportunities ahead.

What has skiing in New England meant to your life or your community? What does it mean to you to be a cross-country skier from New England?

CR: I have a lot of pride in being from Vermont/New England AND in representing the USA when we go overseas. When I was younger, I used to think we were always chasing the competition and playing catch up. As a XC ski nation we were “spinning our wheels” and not moving forward. In truth, for a long time, that was the case. Now however, we are doing a lot that is absolutely correct! We see it culturally and we see it in the results.

Recently, I have even found myself being asked by respected Norwegian and Italian coaches, “So what do you do in Vermont/ the USA?” It feels pretty cool to be asked that question!

In my mind, so much of our success stems from generational knowledge. Whether you are from New England, Alaska, Montana or Norway there are athletes/coaches that are excellent at their craft. They have found things that have worked well and also not afraid to investigate new ideas. What stands out about New England skiing is that we have always been great at taking the time to pass that transformational knowledge along. Although it’s not always easy, we make time to collaborate as different states and that pushes the region forward as a whole. Continuity is also a priority and that is key to flowing in the correct direction.

Tradition runs deep in New England!

Can you share a moment that embodies the spirit of New England skiing?

CR: Helping New England to win the Jr National Championships for many years has always given me a sense of pride. It was fun to win when I was a Jr and it has been fun to win as Team New England over many years while coaching at Green Mtn Valley School.

In all truth though, it is encouraging to see the other regions getting stronger and more competitive. Intermountain and Alaska have both been knocking on the door the past several years and I like that because it is forcing us to work harder AND smarter to be better.

This is a good problem for NE and for the future of US Cross Country Skiing in the USA. It will make us better while eyeing 2034 in Salt Lake!

What does NENSA mean to you?

CR: The New England Nordic Skiing Association is a community of dedicated winter enthusiasts that value the lifelong tradition of Cross Country skiing as more than just racing, but rather a lifestyle.