September 16, 2013 – Today begins the largest grassroots funding effort for Nordic Skiing, the annual Drive for 25. What, years ago, began as a simple call from USST coaches to donate a $25, now represents a coming together of our sport for our sport. By clicking THIS LINK for Cross Country or THIS LINK for Nordic Combined, you’re assuming responsibility for the future of ski racing, for the culture of ski racing.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve organized your life around cross-country skiing. You may have a normal job, a family, obligations that keep you from dropping everything and training full time or leaving your home to travel along side the US Team on the World Cup in a type of FIS-focused fever.  (Think face painting and sausages cooked over an open flame.) Chances are, if you’re reading this, you caught the bug years ago and you’ve been organizing your life around corduroy tracks and careful klister application ever since. At the very least, you likely find yourself pouring over the results from World Cups or Europa Cups or Besch Cups in awe, impressed and compelled by nordic athletes.

If that is the case, then you would remember when Nordic race footage was hard to come by in the US. You would remember when a good American World Cup finish was the top fifty and you would remember when we were merely tourists in the sport: misfits borrowing a culture from the Scandinavians, the Europeans, those that set the race schedules and the FIS points profiles. If you had ties to US teams, you remember wax rooms the size of closets, athletes prepping their own skis and funding for the top end of the sport that numbered fewer dollars than typically support a single-A baseball team.

Those times seem long gone and, mercifully, they’re receding in our collective memory. American cross-country skiing has gained popularity, credibility, professionalism and, subsequent to grassroots funding like the NNF, results. It’s also become a viable professional pursuit for more athletes and more coaches. People are spending more time chasing the impossible dream of international Nordic skiing success. Along that path, more people are learning about process, goals, overcoming, difficulty, the natural world, international relations, competition, drive and physical health. There are more people, like you, organizing a life around cross-country skiing.

Our excellent results now, will be held up by younger skiers tomorrow. Today’s Nordic stars will become the leaders of tomorrow off of the trail. This perpetuating cycling is the product of support from you, your giving and the greater support of the skiing community.

We’re a tribe. A group of people with shared values.  A social group united by rollerskis and fiberlene, by striped socks and glitter face paint. When you give to the NNF, you’re investing in a larger experience for American skiing, you’re celebrating your connection to the scene and you’re declaring that this is important. Cross country skiing is a perfectly valid way to organize a life.  By giving to the NNF, you ensure future skiers are able to do just that.

Sign up. Become an ambassador. Drive the sport forward.

Support Cross Country
Support Nordic Combined