September 23, 2013 – It’s very easy to kick back and watch the Drive for 25 happen passively, to cut and paste the NNF’s call to action on a Facebook page, to let it all unfold presuming the money will roll steadily in. It’s something else completely to take ownership of the drive, to make it personal and to connect it with your own racing, your own love of skiing.

Katherine Ogden (center) at last year's Junior Nationals © Bert Boyer

Katherine Ogden has done the latter and, along with a few others, is setting the bar high for fundraising. We’re reprinting her NNF group fundraising page here as a model others might follow:

Profiles in Drive – Katherine Ogden
I’m Katharine Ogden and I have been shuffling around on Nordic skis since before I can remember. In the past few years that little hobby has exploded into an amazing, if demanding lifestyle for me. I now attend Stratton Mountain School, a winter sports academy in Vermont where I have the opportunity to train twice a day for my sport during the school day. Last winter my ski racing took me from all over New England to Park City, Utah and then to Trondheim, Norway.

It was an amazing way to spend the winter, traveling around, making new friends and doing the sport I love. Once the summer started I was off and running again. My first training camp was in Stratton Vermont at SMS. This was a camp for all the best junior skiers in New England. The next stop was Marquette, Michigan for National U16 camp here I was able to train with and get to know the best athletes my age in the country.

Later in the summer I flew to Park City for the National Training Group camp at the Center of Excellence( fun fact: its address is 1 Victory lane), this was a camp where I was able to work with US Ski Team coaches and train with eight of the fastest junior girls in the country. It was an amazing and inspiring experience. My last stop for the summer was another National camp in Lake Placid, New York.

Here I was given the opportunity to spend a week living and training with the US Ski Team at the Olympic Training Center. Everywhere that skiing takes me the National Nordic Foundation is always working behind the scenes to make sure that there is funding for me and so many other athletes to keep doing what we love. The National Nordic Foundation depends on donations from people who care. Supporting the NNF directly supports me and other top level nordic athletes. THANK YOU NNF!

We’re rewarding Katherine’s efforts with a USST Bjorn Dahlie puffy jacket like the one modeled here by Head Coach, Chris Grover. Want your own Bjorn Dahle USST puffy? We’ll give a jacket away next Monday to the D25 ambassador with the most donations from this week (Sept 23-30)

Stay tuned for more D25 support from the USST, Concept 2,  Swix Sport, Toko, Fischer Skis.