Member Coach Resources
Welcome to NENSA’s hub for coaches, leaders, and ski community volunteers. This page is in development and aims to offer a wide range of tools – tips, video clips, clinic notes, and trusted external resources – to help you grow as a coach and support skiers at every level. From development frameworks and athlete safety guidelines to training systems, waxing tutorials, and resource libraries, you’ll find content designed to inform, inspire, and strengthen your coaching.
We also know the best ideas come from our community, so if you have a favorite resource, article, or video that could help others, please share it with us. Together, we can keep building a strong and supportive ski community for all.
Club Development
At NENSA, we are committed to building a culture where every athlete can learn, grow, and compete in an environment that is safe, respectful, and supportive. A healthy sport culture protects our community, nurtures our athletes, and inspires a lifelong love of cross-country skiing. The resources on THIS page are designed to help you, our coaches and leaders, in creating and fostering physically, psychologically and emotionally safe spaces where skiers can grow and excel as athletes and community members.
Description: Isabel will present on how to build the foundations of a successful club that can serve all community members. The presentation will encourage people to play to their strengths and work with co-leaders whose strengths complement their own. Isabel will then delve into volunteer recruitment and how to make your volunteers feel useful and valued. And because her favorite animal is the American Beaver the presentation will be in the model of a beaver meadow!
Speaker Bio: Isabel’s roots run deep in the New England ski community. Through West River BKL and Stratton Mountain School, she developed a love of sport that led her to Dartmouth College, where she studied Earth Science and was a varsity member and captain of the ski team. She went on to earn a Masters degree in Teaching at UVM and has since taught math and science at the middle and high school levels, most recently at Sugar Bowl Academy in Norden, CA. Throughout her career, Isabel has been committed to the growth and development of young people far beyond the traditional classroom as a ski coach, wilderness trip leader, drama teacher, and dorm parent.
In her coaching roles, Isabel has worked with diverse programs and skiers of all ages and abilities. She has served as Youth Ski Club Director and Head Coach at Frost Mountain Nordic, Head Coach at Burr & Burton Academy, and U8 Coach with the Sugar Bowl Ski Team. Additionally, she has served on the Executive Committee of Far West Nordic, coordinated regional opportunities, and contributed to a strategic planning process.
Presentation Slides
A panel discussion on community development with Former Stratton Mountain School Program Director and longtime NENSA community stalwart Sverre Caldwell.
“I am not making them great. They are making themselves great.” – Sverre Caldwell, to FasterSkier in 2019.
As of late, America has had outsized success in the world of nordic skiing. In American skiing, the State of Vermont has had outsized success in producing world class nordic skiers. And in Vermont, one community tucked up in the Green Mountains has been home to an outsized number of those skiers, Stratton.
Nordic hadn’t climbed the mountain yet, literally, when Sverre Caldwell started coaching at SMS in 1980. Down in the West River Valley community of Putney, a generation of successful American skiers including Bill Koch, Martha Rockwell, and Sverre’s brother Tim were working with a group led by Sverre’s Father, John.
Sverre set to grounding his family roots in ski community. While coaching his SMS team, he led efforts to get local kids on skis at West River Sports, and on the other end, founded the SMS T2 Olympic Development Program. The result was a community which lived up to his highest ideal: have skiers pursue the sport to the best of their abilities, wherever those abilities took them.
Now retired, our NENSA community gets a chance to hear stories, lessons learned, and guiding philosophies from a community member who has an outsized role in developing what we all know and love as US Skiing. In a loosely structured conversation, Sverre is set to lead this discussion as he led his Program: approachable, set in principles, and with a love of nordic skiing radiating through.
Sverre Caldwell has coached, developed, and led the SMS Nordic community since 1980. During his tenure at SMS, the nordic program produced 15 Olympians, and produced at least one Junior National Champion for 24 straight years (a streak which is currently ongoing, now at 28 years).
Program Pedagogy & Philosophy
A talk on the values and ideals of the Bill Koch League, from NENSA’s own Youth and Introductory Program Director.
Presentation Slides | Presentation recording coming soon
Hear from Ford Sayre BKL’s own Jay Davis on some special events that FS offers their club members – and. then design your own event plan tailored to your club and district.
Where and how are skiers in New England developing? Ideas to help us all ski better, together.
Sport for All, Play for Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game: This 50-page report released in January 2015, aggregates the eight most promising strategies for the eight sectors that touch the lives of children. This document is a call to all stakeholders, parents, policy makers and coaches to work together to grow access to an early, positive sport experience.
Learn about NENSA’s competitive program philosophy as well as coach development programs, events, and certification opportunities.
Athlete Development
Skiers are always coming to practice from somewhere else. Coaching skiers, then, means helping them navigate the sport alongside big transitions in their young lives.
Lizzie Larkins has spent her career thinking and researching those big transitions. While actively coaching the Montana State Bobcats ski team, she completed her thesis examining the transition away from competitive nordic skiing for skiers at the collegiate and elite levels. Here those findings are paired with Lizzie’s own experiences as a former UVM skier, junior coach at Auburn Ski Club in her native Truckee, California, member of the 2022-23 World Junior Ski Championships Staff, and US Trip Leader for the 2024 Youth Olympic Games. Lizzie currently works with the US Paralympic team.
Description: Kris will present on the role coaches play in the mental health of their athletes. Using an autobiographical outline, he will delineate the importance of providing a low-pressure environment that focuses on skill building and fun for developing skiers. He will encourage patience throughout the development process, emphasizing that mental and physical growth are equally important to maximize an athlete’s potential. The environment needed for this growth is set by the expectations, values and behaviors of the coach. Unconditional support and acceptance leads to trust, which gives young athletes the courage to grow without fear of failure.
Speaker Bio: Kris Freeman is a 4 x Olympian in cross country skiing. Highlights of his athletic career include a 5th place finish in the 4 x 10k relay at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, winning the inaugural U-23 world championship 30k classic in Valdidentro, Italy in 2003, placing 4th in the 15k classic at the world championships In Liberec, Czech Republic, and amassing 17 US national championships from 2000-2015. Kris is a Type 1 diabetic and has worked as a patient advocate and public speaker in the diabetes community for 23 years. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Plymouth State University and will graduate with a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health from PSU in August of 2026. You can explore Kris’s website which is still in development but has a bunch of helpful and relevant information and resources: Empowering Youth in Sports.
Canadian Sport For Life Long Term Athlete Development 2.1: A resource paper on the Canadian framework of Long-Term Athlete Development, a training, competition, and recovery program based on developmental age – the maturation level of an individual – rather than chronological age.
The below website contains resources and information dedicated to youth mental health and advocating for youth feeling parental pressure in sport.
Training & Technique
Dr. Sharon Henry will provide a two-part lecture and practicum focused on the elements of balance control, how the skill of balance changes across the athlete development span, and the guiding principles that coaches can use to select activities that enhance balance control in their athletes. With a PhD in Neuroscience and post-doctoral training in human postural control, Dr. Henry has a long career in sensorimotor control in musculoskeletal populations. As a student of cross-country skiing for the last 18 years and member of the Mansfield Nordic Club ski community, she is interested in and challenged by the balance demands of the sport and is happy to share her expertise in balance with the skiing community!
- Presentation Slides | Presentation recording coming soon
- Graphic: Framework for Balance Exercises – Mix & Match Balance Challenges
- Articles:
Description: Skiing is a beautiful, yet sometimes complex sport where fitness alone is insufficient for success, and even enjoyment. Balance, technique, and skiing economy, plus equipment, all interact and are key considerations for new and older skiers with performance objectives. Other considerations are life stresses, and limited training hours, in a sport that can still project ‘more is better.’ Based on a combination of emerging science and reflections on working with both elite and new master skiers, this webinar is designed to assist skiers with sifting through the noise and making decisions around how they spend their time and energy, and to balance performance objectives with overall health and well-being.
Speaker Bio: Coach Matt Klick (PhD) has been competing in endurance sports for over 25 years. From skiing across Baffin Island and first ascents in Alaska to local cyclocross races and the Birkie, Matt has long identified with the time-crunched but goal-oriented athlete. In nordic skiing, Matt has been Master National Champion, won his age group at Birkie classic (18th overall; 2nd in skate the year prior) and has multiple age-group podiums and top elite wave finishes in some of America’s biggest races. Matt has also been a Colorado cyclocross state champion and competed across the country in cycling, gravel, skimo, and ultra running races. Matt has previously coached juniors in Montana, Colorado, and Norway as well, (including a young Petter Northug). But it was his experience achieving his own goals through careful preparation amid a hectic job that included international travel, plus his enthusiasm for working with people and empathetic communication, that led Matt to start Red Elephant Racing. Matt (seen here with Aksel, his long-time agility coordinator) possesses his USSS L100 coaching certification, and is currently pursuing his USAC Level 3 cert.
An on-foot & on-ski group clinic sharing technique progressions, drills, and games from some of our regional coaching leaders.
Equipment & Waxing
Managing the constraints of time, conditions, and equipment consistently produce the right tool for skiers on race day, with Zach Caldwell of Caldwell Sport.
