Bates Nordic Skiing: Yelling at Kids to Get their Hips Forward and What it Taught Me

Saturday at 6:30 in the morning we drive down a one and a half lane road with no guard rail. The boys are smashed into the backseat of my mom’s Subaru Forester talking about rollerskiing up this road, or even worse, down it. As we navigate the cracks and bumps, Trace launches into a discussion of GoPros and chickens. Chicken’s have incredibly stable heads, he tells us, therefore strapping a GoPro onto a chicken would be your best bet for catching any sort of bumpy ride on video. This is the kid that duck hunts on the weekends, has (finally) chosen Nordic over football, and has been known to wear full camouflage long underwear as his race suit. Connor eats a Cliff bar and laughs along, his hair sticking straight up from oversleeping and almost missing the workout. Earlier in the summer, he considered dying his hair blue (we luckily talked him out of it). Calvin sits in the middle, ever prepared, but not prepared for the bonk awaiting him several hours down the trail. I can’t stop laughing and I exchange a glance with my mom, knowing it’s going to be another one of “those days”.

We met up with the younger group at the trailhead and split up- Nancy and Laurel with the older boys and Bryce with the U16s. Our day would consist of a run/hike loop that we had been preparing for all summer. It ended up being a success for both groups. I finished the day with the realization that I only have one more week left of the best job ever.

When people ask me what I’ve been doing this summer for work I respond, “Yelling at kids to get their hips forward,” which is basically my summer job in a nutshell. In reality, it’s more complicated.

Two summers ago, I got an assistant coaching job through our local club working with my mom and Bryce, one of her former athletes. It was great, so this summer I decided to try it again, but with a little more vigor. I wanted to be more involved in the planning and execution of the workouts than before, which was a little nerve racking as many of our athletes aren’t much younger than I am. With some confidence and careful planning, I earned the respect of our athletes and continued to have the best summer of my life.

Mammoth Lakes, California is known for its alpine and snowboard culture. Nordic skiing is very small here. All of the junior programs were initiated by my mom, including our small club team that operates separately from the high school program. Our club had eight athletes in it this summer with a very wide range of abilities, personalities, and levels of dedication. High school is challenging, at least it was for me. In the midst of going to three different schools, skiing was the one thing that was always there. Although our athletes are very different, they are friends and have enormous respect for each other. Skiing is there for them too.

High school athletes are at a pivotal moment in their skiing careers. They are starting more intense strength programs, learning nuances in technique, figuring out how to pace, and generally training harder. Amidst all of this, they are realizing that dedication pays off. They are learning how to be a team. They are starting to grow into the people they will become. And coaches? They do their best to teach, laugh along with the hilarity of it all, and enjoy the ride.

Yes, I did spend a lot of time on the side of the road yelling at kids to get their hips forward. I also taught them how to navigate the mountains. I watched them make technique breakthroughs. I saw them blow up in intervals and learn the hard lesson. I tried to motivate and push them through hard strength and interval workouts. It paid off seeing how much they have all grown. One of our younger athletes who weighs 95 pounds, wears glasses, and will have his AA degree when he graduates high school, completed four hill repeats last week, smiling. At the beginning of the summer, he could barely run a mile and complained on a daily basis. That alone is reason to celebrate.

People often ask my mom, a two time Olympian and fourteen time national champion, why she no longer really competes. She responds that she loves coaching and hanging out with teenagers. While I am very much still in my own college career and am still trying to figure the whole darn sport out, coaching has done something special for my own skiing. Teaching technique has allowed me to work on fine tuning my own in order to demonstrate and better explain. Sometimes I have to suck up my ego and do the right thing when I am doing a long ski or intervals with them in order to lead by example. More than anything, coaching has given me the opportunity to give back to a sport and lifestyle that has taught and given me so much. Watching our athletes undergo that same process leaves me inspired. Their smiles when they have PR’d or finally kicked at the right time in classic reminds me of something familiar.

I am looking forward to going back to my own team and coaches at Bates. As our team’s season approaches, I will wish my team back in Mammoth the best for their own season. I know the hard work will pay off in more ways than they can imagine.

Happy training!
-Laurel