St. Olaf Nordic Team

     Seeing as summer is rapidly drawing to a close, it seems fitting that St. Olaf Nordic should offer an update on all of their summer adventures. In the absence of snow, we still manage to train (and even have fun!) in the dog days of summer. Our team is scattered all around the United States from the east coast to the west coast and our activities and training are just as variable.      Mitchell has been spending the summer at Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve in Maine as an assistant camp counselor. He has collected an impressive variety of nicknames from his campers, such as “fungi,” “fathead” (hopefully named for the minnow species), and “Sensei.” Although he misses his teammates, he has been managing to have fun and train by rollerskiing and hiking around Maine. Mitchell found Mark Trail on the backroads of Maine      Moving westward, several members of St. Olaf Nordic have remained in the general Minnesota area...

April brings a lull in the competitive skiing adventures of our team, but the fun never stops!  At our end of season banquet Brochman gave accurate and detailed descriptions of the successes of each skier’s season, and of their training plans while abroad.  It was a great time to celebrate the season. Congratulations to all the Academic All-Americans from the Nordic and Alpine Teams. In our new free time we revived an old favorite ski team game: Mafia.  At first things weren’t looking good for the mafia when Molly was killed in the first vote.  But Leif was then able to kill all the rest of us pretty quickly.   After that we joined with the Alpine team to play a game of hug assassins.   Additionally Tuesday afternoons have become game time.  With some nicer weather we’ve been able to play frisbee outside, but have also played some basketball, gone rock climbing, and invented a new game of tennis.  Our intramural this session is outdo...

This year, we traveled to Bend, Oregon for US College Nationals. We fought through altitude and more snow than we have ever seen in MN to 1) find the trailhead and 2) race! It was an absolute joy to see so much snow. St. Olaf killed it at USCSA’s with 10 top 10 finishes! As we all know, 10 is better than 6. Before the racing started, we got to explore the beautiful Smith Rock State Park. Brochman ran while we walked. We also took our first trip up to Mt. Bachelor and were met with more snow than most of us had ever experienced before.  Over the next week the mountain received about 4 feet of new snow, making for some soft conditions during the races.   The parking lot snow pile. No wonder we couldn't find the Nordic Center behind all that snow! Smith Rock State Park We finally found the mountains when the sun came out on the last day! The Women's and Men's USCSA Teams The first day of racing was the 7.5k classic individual start, which too...

For our last CCSA race of the season, the Oles took our largest team up to the infamous hills at Al Quaal, in Ishpeming, Michigan. Unfortunately, our attempts at intimidating the NMU’s and Green Beans with large numbers weren’t super successful and they still showed up in full force. Saturday’s races were mass start: a 15k skate for the women, and a 20k skate for the men.  It was a beautiful day, and more than a few of us went home with a sunburn!  Bri and Shelby took advantage of a great opportunity to race well, finishing 22 and 28, respectively.  The men were led by two fantastic freshmen, Tyler in 40th and Spencer in 44th.  Chris and Leif also made statements with their headwear choices: a sparkly red baseball cap for Chris, and a Pokemon had for Leif.  In their 2017 debuts Andrew and Molly performed well and we were glad to have them back from the Mediterranean.  I’d tell you where they were, but I wouldn’t want to get it wrong and make that the o...

Wow! That was fast!   Interim came and went in a flash, but not without plenty of action from the St Olaf Nordic Team.   From racing all around the upper Midwest, to dominating at broomball, to even starting their own radio show, January had a little bit of everything for the Oles. Week one of Interim was filled with intense training as we were shocked to actually see snow on the ground at St. Olaf.   Our fearless captain Mitchell Miller even dared to comment that “This is the best snow we have ever had at St. Olaf!” despite the measly three inches being packed down to barely grass via the steel door.   On Sunday to finish up the week, most of the squad headed north in to the city to race the Preloppet, a grueling 14k skate event.   On the gun, Leif (my name is actually Leaf) Hanson sprinted out to an early lead, but 200 meters in, he decided to fall back a little and join the Ole train in order to make sure that the Oles were prominently featured on Ski...