St. Olaf Nordic Team

              In the words of Rose “my real name is Anne” Doda, “I don’t think there isn’t anything we didn’t get to do in Yellowstone… not .” Or something along those lines. In all seriousness, the 2016 Thanksgiving St. Olaf Nordic Trip was the stuff of dreams—an unrelenting parade of adventure, food, laughter, and skiing. Keep on reading for our best attempt to capture the week in words.       Thanks to Liza’s unmatched organizational skills and Google Sheets prowess, the team booked a phenomenal cabin, ordered trail passes, and loaded Shelby’s cavernous coolers with cafeteria pack-outs (Cooked pasta? Mmm-hmm. Bagels on bagels on bagels? You know it. A hundred mustard packets? Duh.) We eagerly packed up the cars on Friday the 18th, but a wicked storm descended on Minnesota and iced up the highways, so we decided to hit the sack and depart at 4am the following morning. Groggy-eyed and bagel-mouthed, we began our 20-hour journey to heaven aka West Yellowstone, MT. We

Seniors Leif (Captain) is a senior from Northfield, MN. He is majoring in biology and after graduating is planning on taking a gap year (or two, or three, or twelve…) before becoming a surgical physician assistant. Leif’s favorite things about skiing include enjoying the beautiful outdoors with wonderful friends and beating Chris “Topher” Prokosch in races. Outside of skiing, Leif enjoys extreme unicycling, watching soccer, and taking long walks on the beach. Leif holds the (very) unofficial St. Olaf school record for fastest walking mile at 9 minutes and 48 seconds. His patronus is a swallow, although he is literally a piece of toast.    Liza (Captain) is a senior from Acton, MA (just takea I-90 for about 24 hours). She is majoring in Sociology/Anthropology, and she does not know what she wants to do next year, thank you very much. Her favorite part of nordic is enjoying the outdoors with friends and playing in fresh powder. When she is not skiing, Liza loves fall, hiking, sailing,

Aaaaand we’re back! With Fall Break upon us, it is time to reflect back on our first month back on the hill. We have been busy training, hanging out, studying (sometimes) and enjoying the beautiful fall on the Hill. We started off the semester by meeting all our lovely new faces – we have about 10 new First Years joining us this year — while playing the now infamous ‘The Game’, also known as many other things. Since then, we have been too busy doing activities to actually put the roller skis to the ground (just kidding).  Nordies have since been spotted cheering on our current and past XC runners at the Alumni Meet and the St. Olaf Invite. We hosted a penalty kick contest for our Ole Pride event at the Men’s soccer game against Macalester — which was a huge success once we figured out what a penalty kick contest was, and then proceeded to recruit a second goalie because people are just too good at penalty kicks. Shout out to our Alpine friends for being good sports — literally —

Our season officially finished off with our end-of-the-season banquet, where we come together with the Alpine team to celebrate... and more importantly, eat! We also gave out some awards, chose our captains for next year, and took some classic pics.  2016-2017 Captains: Shelby Ahrendt, Liza Dawley, Leif Hanson & Mitchell Miller 2015-2016 MVPs: Nora Gilbertson and Leif Hanson Matt Haugen Award: Bri Paulson  Banquet!  A beautiful spring rolled in, and us Nordies took to the roads, pools, trails and tracks. Between mountain biking trips, road biking adventures, track meets, the annual Challenge of Champions, a full team game of mafia, our Culver's rollerski adventure and the St. Olaf Triathlon, we kept ourselves plenty busy.  Culver's Rollerski (or rollerblade... or bike... or run...)   St. Olaf Nordic takes Triathlon  Speaking of adventuring, the team has been busy this summer, covering all corners of the country, as well as the globe.  Liza: Once again, I