Challenges of a ski program

Coach's Comments, by Ed Strabel

Please place your tray table in the upright and locked position and prepare for take off. Today we'll be cruising at 34,000 feet en route to Skyview High School with intermediate stops at the Great Harvest Bread Company and Girdwood.

The Colony and Su Valley ski teams recently competed in another adventure -- the Skyview sprint ski races. It was an early-season opportunity for cross-country skiers to test themselves against all the other Region III skiers.

For the veteran skiers it was also an opportunity to renew friendships and compare training notes with skiers they haven't seen since the state cross-country running meet or last ski season.

For new skiers, it's a learning experience -- how to warm up; how to ensure they don't miss their start time and how to pace themselves (even in a sprint race). They also learned how to pack light and right for a weekend trip and to appreciate the fine classical music that the bus driver plays.

High school skiers and coaches in Mat-Su Valley have few extra hurdles that most areas of Alaska don't have to contend with. Coaches first have to teach most of their skiers how to ski first, then how to ski fast.

Most schools in Alaska have middle school ski programs that teach young kids how to ski and how to race. In the Mat-Su Borough school District, that doesn't happen until the kids come out for the high school team. Most have never skate skied and few have classical skied.

This year the Colony ski team had a lot of new members who had never skied before. Fortunately for the first time in several years we had snow to ski on from day one. First-year skiers and veterans worked on drills to improve weight shift and use a full range of motion. From a coach's perspective, this is a key part of the season for the skier. Good technique results in fast skiing and fun. Poor technique results in frustration as well as slow skiing.

After several sessions on the football field working on drills, the skiers progressed to the hills of the Colony trail system where uphill and downhill techniques were introduced. Fortunately, the early season snow was adequate for both classic and skate skiing. The obvious differences between experienced and beginner skiers began to disappear.

Skiing is one sport where natural talent will only take you halfway. Motivation, dedication and inner drive is what's required to become a top-level skier. Most of the top skiers in the world had good coaches when starting, but as they reach more advanced levels they assure greater and greater responsibility for their training and the role of the coach is more of an advisor and counselor. By the time a skier is a junior or senior, the good ones are developing their own training programs. The coaches merely tweak the skier's techniques, occasionally organizing drills, time interval sessions and working primarily with the new skiers.

As the season progresses, it becomes a regular routine, mixing long, easy skiing sessions with technique, drills and an occasional speed session in preparation for the weekly road trips to Valdez, Fairbanks, Nikiski, Soldotna and Su Valley. All of this in preparation for the region meet at Nikiski and the state meet in Fairbanks.

For some skiers, it goes beyond these races -- to the Tour of Anchorage, the Junior National competition in McCall, Idaho or the Arctic Winter Games in Greenland where they might hear "please place your tray table in the upright and locked position and prepare for takeoff."

Ed Strabel is the cross-country ski coach at Colony High School.