Hanover
Comprised of 17 high-school-aged athletes from seven towns and five high schools, Ford Sayre’s JNT and its supporters faced challenges from more than rival competitors. The region’s dearth of snow meant constantly traveling to find man-made patches of the white stuff or relying on skiers, coaches, parents and volunteers to manually create trails with whatever natural snow lay by.
The latter was the case at the annual New England Nordic Ski Association U16 championships earlier this month at Bethel, Maine’s Gould Academy, where volunteers used tractors, large push shovels and other equipment to coat the courses’ trails with enough snowcover to hold races. The event had already been shifted from its originally planned site in Rumford, Maine, where there was even less snow on the ground.
“It’s kind of representative of the Nordic skiing community as a whole, for everyone to come together like that to make it happen,” said Ford Sayre JNT assistant coach Dennis Donahue in an interview at barren Oak Hill. “It’s a small community that has a can-do attitude. If there’s not a lot of snow, you get a few people together, get some trucks and make it happen.”
JNT head coach Scottie Eliassen was absent from NENSA U16s because she was in Cable, Wis., coaching team New England — a roster that included Ford Sayre skier and Hanover High junior Adam Glueck — at the USSA National Junior Championships. The event was equally fraught with poor skiing conditions as Glueck placed seventh in the sprint, 11th in the distance and 12th in the classic to help New England win despite repeated adjustments to compensate for snow-starved terrain.
“It was one continuous string of changes to the start times, changes to the venues and the formats and the distances,” Eliassen recalled. “Fortunately, being from New England, we were well-equipped. It was the type of conditions we’ve been dealing with all year.”
At least some clubs in New England enjoy regular access to man-made snow. That’s not the case for Ford Sayre, which settled for dry-land training or ventured to locales with man-made surfaces such as Andover, N.H.’s Proctor Academy, Rikert Nordic Center in Ripton, Vt., the Craftsbury (Vt.) Nordic Center and several local alpine ski areas to access man-made snow.
It didn’t stop many of Ford Sayre’s JNT skiers from having standout seasons. Glueck’s seventh-place finish in 2 minutes, 36.37 seconds in the U18 sprint at USSA Junior Nationals was his fourth career All-American (top-10) result, the previous three coming at the U16 level.
“I really don’t see myself as a sprinter, so it was kind of a surprise,” said Glueck, whose competitive season continues today at the USSA Super Tour Finals at Craftsbury. “I really focus on the endurance aspect of training, so to me it shows that endurance really helps you with every event.”
Norwich’s Perrin Milliken was outstanding at the NENSA U16 championships, winning the 5K classic (16:39.1), and 1.2K classic sprint (5:48.88) while placing sixth in the skate sprint to join Maine’s Abigail Streinz as the weekend’s top point-getters (507).
Milliken followed that with top-20 showings in the classic (15th; 32:54.5), mixed relay (15th; 24:27.2) and sprint (17th; 4:04.72) at last weekend’s Eastern High School Championships at Rikert.
“I would say this was definitely my best year as a competitor,” said Milliken, who’s trained with Ford Sayre since third grade. “I think a lot of it has to do with offseason training leading up to the season, a lot of roller skiing and running.”
Milliken’s second cousin, Johanna Bandler, placed second in the classic sprint (5:48.88) and 12th in the skate sprint (5:07.57) at NENSA U16s for a sixth-place overall individual standing, second to Milliken among New Hampshire skiers. That helped the Granite State capture the meet championship for the first time. (Though Milliken and Bandler both reside in Norwich, they competed for Team New Hampshire at NENSAs and Easterns because they’re Hanover High students, Eliassen noted.)
Ford Sayre’s Erik Lindahl, a Thetford resident and Thetford Academy junior, was part of a Vermont team that won last weekend’s Eastern High School title. Lindahl placed 23rd in the classic (19:48.3), 26th in the freestyle (15:23.8) and was on Vermont’s 10th-pace mixed relay team (23:54.7) to aid in the Green Mountain State’s title.
Ford Sayre’s makeup of athletes from an array of schools and communities is a big part of what makes the club unique, coaches say. Its Junior Nordic roster includes a wide range of experience, from Milliken, who said she’s been skiing “since before I could walk,” to Kearsarge Regional High junior Tim Cunningham, a Springfield, N.H., resident who only took up cross country skiing when he was a freshman. Cunningham improved vastly this season, jumping up 120 points in a national standings database that establishes rankings based each athlete’s best four races.
“(Cunningham) is actually being modest if he tells you that the season he had was only OK,” said Donahue, a two-time Olympic biathlete who’s been coaching with Ford Sayre since the 1980s. “We love to see that type of progress because this club is about long term improvement and skiing for life.”
There’s plenty of bonding along the way. Even winters filled with extra travel such as this one are “tons of fun,” Bandler said, and the athletes aren’t strangers during the offseason.
Despite a range of commitments such as spring and fall high school sports, Ford Sayre JNT athletes are always chomping at the bit for a taste of Nordic training, organizing dry-land outings throughout the year both with and without coaches present.
“A lot of ski schools have year-round training programs. We’re a year-round program, too, but our kids are in different high schools and almost all of them play other sports,” said Eliassen. “To see kids from seven towns and five high schools — really six, because we have one who’s home schooled — come together as much as they do is pretty extraordinary.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.