June 23, 2012 (Anchorage, Alaska) – The second annual North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp is now on in Alaska with the top US and Canadian women skiers gathering for a major pow-wow that includes Finnish star, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, who is staying with American star Kikkan Randall. We caught up with US Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb just as the camp was begining for a brief overview…

How many women are attending –  US – Can – Int’l ?
MW: We have five ladies from the U.S. Ski Team (Brooks, Stephen, Randall, Bjornsen, and Diggins – missing Sargent), all five from the Canadian National Team (Crawford, Nishikawa, Jones, Gaiazova, and Marshall), Aino-Kaisa Saarinen from Finland, Heidi Halvorsen from GMVS, Corey Stock from CSU and Dartmouth, and a number of both elite and developing women joining us from APU including Kate Fitzgerald, Rosie Brennan, Becca Rorabaugh, Celia Haerring, Kinsey Loan and a few others that come in and out.

What’s the main goal(s) of the camp…?
MW: The goal of the camp is to build the strongest women’s training group possible in North America and then put the pedal to the floor for two weeks. Head-to-head training is the focus. We work hard to build partnerships in the U.S., and this relatively new emphasis has spurred the creation of the North American Women’s Training Alliance, or NAWTA. I think Kikkan came up with the name last year. We all want to build world-class programs and we recognize the importance of working together to do it.  As coaches we learn more this way, not to mention that most female athletes tend to thrive in a partnership-driven environment.

Many of these women have been training hard for more than ten years and are at the level where we are looking to improve only 1 or 2%.  In the U.S. (and Canada) we have motivated athletes, strong coaches, and a teams that work together towards excellence, but that 1% can be hard to find. Head-to-head training in the best training groups we can create is our answer to getting at it.

Any success we have as a nation is going to have a lot of people behind it.  That’s a very cool thing.

Who’s involved with putting on the NAWTA Camp ? 
MW: This camp is a partnership between the U.S. Ski Team, Canadian National Team, and Alaska Pacific University.