September 20, 2010 (Waltham, MA) – Here’s a brief look at some of the presentations at the NENSA Nordic Symposium on the final Day 3 including Developing Champions: Stratton model by Sverre Caldwell, SMS; Club Development by Abby Weissman and Patrick Cote, NENSA; and Ski Technique Development by Patrick Casey, Holderness.

Developing Champions: Stratton model – Sverre Caldwell, SMS
Sverre Caldwell presented a talk on his Stratton Mountain School program.  SMS is the gold standard for ski academy programs producing at least one Junior National Champion every year for the past 14 years and having at least member or alum at World Juniors in each of those years.  He subtitled his talk “cradle to grave” development to emphasize his focus on lifetime development.  His personal coaching goal is to have a SMS alumnus or alumna win a medal at the Olympics or the Nordic World Championships.  From that outcome goal he has developed a set of process goals.  He focuses on long-term development, tries to make cross-country skiing cool with some heroes to admire, and works with the local BK (kids) clubs to prepare skiers for the SMS program.  Sverre described their basic 500-hour per year training plan that all athletes build up to by senior year.  He feels that juniors can add 50 hours per year without a problem.  He runs a year-round program and always invites alums to come back to join workouts.  Most famous of these alums is Andy Newell, who devotes a lot of time to working with the athletes at the school and modeling exceptional technique.  Sverre keeps things simple and clearly focused.  He inspired all the coaches at the symposium to strive to produce the next generation of elite athletes.

Club Development – Abby Weissman/ Patrick Cote, NENSA
NENSA Executive Director, Pat Cote, and NENSA Youth and Introductory Programs director, Abby Weissman presented talks on building club programs.  Pat described his personal experience starting a new club from scratch in his hometown of Waterville, Maine.  Abby spoke about her experiences working with BK clubs all over New England and her ideas for expanding and improving clubs.  She also showed a great video that explained the BK program and NENSA’s role in overseeing and promoting it.

Ski Technique Development – Patrick Casey, Holderness

Pat Casey, who is now coaching at the Holderness school after a long stint with the U.S. Ski Team, gave a talk on technique.  He reviewed how there are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learner and how we need as coaches to be able to reach skiers of all three types.  He puts his primary focus on body position, then timing, and finally power.  Using many video examples from the U.S. Ski team he illustrated all the points of good technique.  In addition, he discussed how to use video to help improve a skier’s technique and what pitfalls to avoid.  It was exciting for the regional coaches to get a glimpse of how things are done on the national team and inspiring to see good technique in detail.

All the participants agreed that it was a great symposium.  Many new ideas were presented, good ideas reinforced, and connections between all the regions most passionate believers in the sport enhanced.  Bravo to Janice Sibilia for organizing the event and to all of the NENSA staff and volunteers for putting together such a great weekend.