Now that all the paperwork is official, it’s time to congratulate our 4 graduating seniors who are taking their skiing to the next level in 2017/2018!
Alex Warner is going to continue his momentum from a strong senior year (culminating in a strong showing at Easterns) at St. Michaels where he’ll ski for the Purple Knights next season. We hope our connection with this nearby group continues after linking up for some training last fall because it’ll be great to have Alex back at the Range rollin’ with the Pugs now and then!
Ben Carnahan is headed to St. Lawrence where he’ll trade in the MNC colors for the Scarlet and Brown. Ben dealt with compartment syndrome coming into last year, and faced a hip injury in the fall, but put the setbacks behind him and had his most focused year racing all of the Eastern Cups and more. It’s great to see it culminate in a spot on the SLUSKI team!
Eliza Thomas will make it 2 Pugs-turned-Saints as she also earned a spot skiing for St Lawrence along with Ben. Eliza had strong races in both biathlon and nordic, and the proximity of SLU to Lake Placid means she can continue to pursue both next season.
Will Solow will be a member of the Colby College class of 2022…there’s an extra year in there because this coming season he’ll be training and competing with the postgraduate program at the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.
I’m looking forward to seeing and following all that this crew accomplishes in their continuing ski careers…after, of course, they get even stronger and faster during this summer while they’re still in our corner of Vermont! While seeing athletes make progress with their fitness and technique is inspiring, and watching athletes achieve new performance breakthroughs and have their best races is rewarding, the college piece is even more special.
Having skiers routinely leave Mansfield Nordic ready for another step in the ski world is a sign of so many puzzle pieces coming together. While training hard as Junior skiers is maybe the most direct puzzle piece, there are so many other factors related to higher education that these skiers have had to navigate: communicating with coaches and academic personnel, developing the responsibility and maturity to set themselves up for a more independent 4 years, and of course studying hard and showing they’re ready for the new academic loads that will accompany their new training loads.
Some of these puzzle pieces can be fostered by the Junior team, but other puzzle pieces come from supportive parents…engaged community members…caring teachers…some of the ski skills needed for collegiate ski teams are cultivated in the BKL ranks before these skiers can even envision high school, let along college.
It certainly got me thinking, particularly when the news was finalized that Eliza and Ben were headed to SLU. I was interested in SLU as a high schooler, attended and raced as a student for 4 years, and then coached there for 3 years while learning about and recruiting athletes like Eliza and Ben. And now I’m back at the beginning of the cycle from a different vantage point.
I can see many steps MNC takes to help skiers prepare for college skiing: tough training, year-round focus, a balancing act of school and competition, and continuing collaboration with college teams themselves (like St. Mikes) to make that next step clear and engaging. I realize that there are even some aspects of my day-to-day coaching style that I carried over from working at the collegiate level…for example, at races I expect athletes to know their own warmup and ski testing plans and not need their hands held. Does this always go flawlessly? Of course not…but the point is for the kinks to be worked out before an athlete gets to college. That makes it one less thing to worry about for everyone involved.
However, there are plenty of ways in which we could do an even better job of preparing skiers for college. Am I too lenient in training sessions? Do we need to have more/longer mandatory study halls on race trips? How about a template for MNC skiers making college visits and sending info to coaches?
The best way to approach these concepts is to keep trying to improve, keep reflecting, and keep working hard. You know, college-level work…
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