NENSA is proud to recognize this year’s Mike Gallagher Award Winners, Greta Kilburn (Mansfield Nordic Club) and Joe Graziadei (GMVS). The Gallagher award formally recognizes the season’s Eastern Cup Champion based on consistent excellence within New England’s premier race series. The full criteria for this award is available here.
While this is given based on performance, the award also looks to recognize the leadership and community dedication that its winners bring to being champions, a model which the awards namesake, Mike Gallagher, set throughout his life.
For more on Mike Gallagher’s legacy, read FasterSkier’s celebration of his life here.
Greta Kilburn (Mansfield Nordic Club)
Greta Kilburn’s Eastern Cup campaign was a testament that persistence pays off. As Mansfield Nordic Club Head Coach Adam Terko wrote in, the 2023-24 season was the first full Eastern Cup campaign she had ever completed. What started off last December in Quarry Road with learning the more idiosyncratic formats in nordic skiing – sprinting, pursuit starts – quickly turned into a season that demonstrated Kilburn’s complete talent as a skier. Her Eastern Cup season was fittingly capped by a win in the Women’s Pursuit at the Harvard Carnival/Craftsbury Eastern Cup. She rounded out a phenomenal year at Junior Nationals, becoming a three-time Junior National Champion in the Classic Sprint, Classic 15 k Mass Start, and the Team Relay for Team New England.
Adam Terko provided the following thoughts on Greta’s achievements this past season, and how her story in skiing acts as a testament to what is possible with patience, perseverance, and an embrace of the pure joy of competing in nordic skiing:
Greta is an overall phenomenal athlete. She skied and ran for Burlington High School in addition to being one of the top cyclists at her age in the entire country. However, the 2023-24 season was the first campaign in which she brought her extensive endurance pedigree to the Eastern Cup. We were lucky to have her training and racing with Mansfield while she navigated being a Freshman at the University of Vermont (where Kilburn will be joining the ski team later this Fall).
Greta arrived at the first Eastern Cup almost directly from biking competitions in the southern part of America, and with each new competition her skiing grew more confident. She had never raced a true sprint format event until the Lake Placid Eastern Cup, and had to learn some key steps about race days throughout the season by being thrown right into the deep end.
At Junior Nationals she was able to put all of that to good use with an amazing week of racing to cap off her season. She’ll begin her sophomore year as a newly-minted official member of the UVM ski team, but will still have to take a few weekends in the Fall off in order to also continue her mountain bike career.
In a culture increasingly affected by stress surrounding college skiing, early specialization, athletic career trajectories, and pressure to perform, I think Greta’s story is truly important. Greta did not race Eastern Cups until after high school, and she entered many championship races oblivious to the backgrounds of many competitors. Therefore Greta remained unfazed by pressure or preconception on race day. The more important factors in Greta’s season were learning new things and pushing herself as hard as she could.
Joe Graziadei (Green Mountain Valley School)
When you interact with Joe Graziadei, you get an immediate impression of the consistent thoughtfulness he puts towards his pursuit of skiing. At Eastern REG earlier this month, Graziadei not only came prepared to compete, but also seemed to bask in the opportunity to show and lead his peers in training around his backyard in northern Vermont. As we announce this Gallagher Award, Joe is helping his coach, Colin Rodgers, lead the Green Mountain Valley School summer camp that he credited as being a key part of his falling in love with the sport of skiing. Joe leads by example, showing that competing at a high level is, and ought to be, a whole lot of fun.
His 2023-24 season in retrospect is telling of his special consistency and leadership as an athlete. Graziadei competed in every Eastern Cup race last season, and found himself on the podium often in events ranging from the season-opening classic sprint at Quarry Road through to the final Holderness Eastern Cup’s 10 k. At Junior Nationals, Joe fittingly played a key role in New England’s Alaska Cup win, scoring two top 10 results in the classic sprint (8th) and 15 k classic mass start (4th). Joe is now preparing to head out West to the University of Denver, where he’ll be joining the ski team this Fall.
Green Mountain Valley School Head Coach Colin Rodgers wrote in on Joe’s season that is telling to his patience and attention to detail as an athlete:
I can’t stress how deserving Joe is of this award and I am so proud that he has earned it!! 2 years ago he struggled with injury and sickness. He was so frustrated finishing off 2022-23 yet he continued to work diligently every day. Still it took time for the pieces to line up. This last year he made a concerted, conscious effort to hone in on the little things – diet, rest, recovery, happiness and balance – and now we see where he has landed! He is one of the strongest athletes his age in the USA!
This Gallagher award is impressive and I am so happy for him.
