As the fall sports season winds down and athletes begin to shift their focus to winter training, racing, scheduling, and commitments, it’s an apt time to discuss the club and high school skiing picture.
Probably the most important thing I can say about balancing different teams and programs is this:
There is not one universal way for a skier to improve, to race their best, or to be at their happiest.
My goal as a coach is to support skiers, and that support can take lots of forms. We are fortunate to live in a place with many different avenues for skiing participation and development. Skiers that have been with MNC since their first strides on snow have achieved great things in the sport. But many skiers have also achieved equally-awesome Nordic milestones having only gotten involved with the club as sophomores or juniors in high school!
I recognize that balancing multiple Nordic settings, groups, coaches, races, and goals is a fact-of-life for many skiers. Really, it can be a great learning experience and tool for developing time management and personal accountability! However, I also am trying to be more assertive with my own values surrounding what “team” means to me.
Selfishly, I’ve found that my own mental health and coaching motivation is often directly correlated to how unified the Juniors are as a group, and how often we get to share experiences and make memories together. These feelings are personal, but I also believe they apply universally to any team/coach.
Because of this, I desperately want Mansfield Nordic skiers to embody a team spirit and a sense of place and pride within the club. This is inherently difficult for a number of reasons:
- We do not all share the same school, much less a school at all, and therefore do not share many off-ski social and group experiences. In fact, we do not even share the same hometowns or even counties.
- We are not governed by rules mandating attendance at practices and competition (see p. 17 “Non-School Competition Rules” and p. 36 “Loyalty Clause“)
- Our racing does not count toward a “team score” measured against other similar clubs. There are not team relays at the NENSA Junior level regionally.
Where does that leave us in terms of building and maintaining a team? I try to frame things positively:
- Everyone who is involved with MNC is there because they want and choose to be there, not because they are mandated to be present. There are no “carrots” I can hold out, such as being able to compete at the State Championship, to motivate engagement.
- We get to work on our skiing outside of just the winter. In the summer and fall, we can continue to get together (even if only sporadically for some) and maintain a connection.
- Because our time together can be fleeting, we really know how to make the most of it, and we do not take group time for granted.
Unsurprisingly, the winter is the toughest time to feel like a group. This is a shame because it’s the season that we look forward to the most, and what we put so much time into all those other months! My word of the year has been compromise and that has applied to many situations, far beyond just high school and club skiing structures. But in this context, it often means a lot of schedule manipulation and communication.
At Sleepy Hollow, skiers are usually spending the early part of the season signing up for time slots and snow time. One way I have tried to mitigate schedule conflicts is by starting MNC practice at 5pm, after most of the HS teams finish-up. This is nice because it allows more skiers to join us who might otherwise be missing another team’s practice to do so. But what about those not skiing with a HS team, who could theoretically ski at 4pm or earlier? What about skiers driving long distances who would prefer to get home at a reasonable hour?
Training in the dark is nothing new!
A high school coach can schedule a session and expect all athletes train together at the same place, at the same time…fail to do so, and you are labelled a poor teammate. But at the club level, our athletes are often arriving and departing in a staggered fashion, in-and-out over the course of sometimes 3 hours. Forget about figuring out a way to train as a whole team; much manipulation has to happen just to ski with the club at all!
Let’s try to find ways to spend as much time as we can skiing TOGETHER this winter, and work with all the parties involved to help us get there!
Races can also cause contention. 50% of held races must be contested by an athlete if they are to be eligible for the State Championship. Keep in mind that not all MNC athletes have Eastern Cup races as their big targets, but races falling on Mondays (usually our off day, and sometimes the day after an Eastern Cup) are not something I’d suggest an athlete complete. The same goes for races on Fridays if there is an Eastern Cup on the next day.
However, it gets more complicated. What about a Tuesday race? Or a Wednesday race?
Physiology would suggest that in a typical week, Wednesday would be the ideal day for intervals. Monday being off leads into Tuesday being a shake-out day to ramp the system up. Intervals on Wednesday, a mid-duration ski on Thursday, then pre-race speeds and pickups on Friday for a race on Saturday. Then a race Sunday if a weekend event, or a long ski if not.
I don’t lay out this “perfect week” with the intent that we always have to structure everything perfectly. Life doesn’t work like that, and neither should the athletic pursuits of a 14-18 year old. We are not the US Ski Team, nor should we be.
But one of our biggest strengths, when we can exercise it, is having a lot of like-minded, competitive skiers in the club who can benefit from doing intensity (hard efforts) together. This is pretty cool, especially because we can actually cross the school-to-school divide to get everyone together pushing hard!
Intervals as a whole team! So rare it literally happens ONCE per year: Thanksgiving week, before winter actually starts
Where it gets tough:
- Not every MNC skier is part of a HS program. Schedules can change.
- Not every HS team attends the same schedule of HS races.
- The days of the week for HS races are not standardized, and sometimes school participation can change.
Often I have tried to keep things simplified by having as many people doing intensity on the same day as possible. That means a HS race might be intensity for some, while others will do intervals that same day. Why do it this way? Because it’s likely we end up with one (maybe two) days a week where a critical mass of MNC skiers can be together. Let’s say that’s a Wednesday…if a portion of the group did a race on Tuesday, I wouldn’t have them do intervals on that Wednesday. But if I had the non-HS group do intervals while the HS racers skied easy, we’ve just given up our fleeting “team” time where we can all be on the same page.
This makes another element very apparent: a race does not just affect the day of the race itself. It also impacts the day before the race, and the day after the race, if you are taking the entire MNC group into account.
Looking for a comprehensive schedule (current as of 10/22/25 with the high school races that have been put forth) of HS/CLUB/NENSA racing? Click below. Tabs go to several different high school race schedules.
CLUB/HS/NENSA COMPILED SCHEDULE 25/26
Let’s try to find ways to maximize the hard days and the easy days alike this winter, and work together as a group to make them both meaningful and fun to be a part of!
Here comes that word again: compromise!
There are so many individual skiers out there, so many different programs, and so many different coaches. In reality I am just another coach trying to work through this whole scene, just like everyone else. I am really proud of what we’ve become as a club, and I hope to keep building and growing. This means continuing to compromise, no doubt. But I also wanted to share this piece because it displays some of my challenges as I put together each month, week, and day we spend out there training!
It hurts to be told that the high school programs are where the teamwork happens, and where the community is built, because I truly feel we are also building a community at MNC. My hope is that everyone skiing with the club, whether also a part of another team or not, can feel the same!
Here is a collection of slides I put together below on the subject, sharing many of the same sentiments I’ve described above, as well as one idea for future collaboration (rather than just compromise).
Please communicate early and often this winter with me, your HS coaches, your parents, and your teammates! So much of the complications laid out above can be worked out for everyone MUCH easier with good proactive discussion 🙂
