For Sun Valley Junior Nordic ski team head coach Rick Kapala, it's impossible to talk about the sport of cross-country skiing without discussing its true foundation—training.
It happens all year.
Sun Valley Competition Team J1 kids ages 16-18 might get over 500 hours of aerobic training over 12 months. In the J2 (14-15) group, the number might be 350 hours. A U.S. Ski Teamer like Kris Freeman might do 850 hours.
"You need a gradual ascendancy as you get older," said Kapala. "As a program, we offer maybe 200 training sessions where coaches and athletes are together over the year. Each session is about an hour-and-a-half, so you get 350 hours there.
"If you're on the Comp Team, you have to be willing to train on your own to get the other 150 hours you probably need. Kids have to want to do it. Fortunately many of our older kids use training in a social way and they support each other that way.
"For many of our seniors working hard and training is seen as cool."
By its very nature Nordic skiing doesn't produce many overnight sensations. Kapala said, "I love Michael Jordan's quote where he says that people just look at the end product, they don't see what goes into it.
"In the winter we race 25 to 30 times, and we figure we're only going to get four or five great races out of that amount. You don't get there overnight, so all you can do is train and prepare at a level where your average day is pretty darn good. The results will take care of themselves."
"Our sport is weird enough as it is, there's no fooling anyone. There's not a lot of luck involved. When you finally get out on the ski trails, either you've done your work or you haven't," said Kapala, in his 20th winter as Sun Valley's head coach.
In dry land training Kapala and his coaching staff test the Nordic team kids twice a year, in June and October, on the Harper's Trail time trial course near Adams Gulch. It's the same course every year. And when three-quarters of the team sets personal records, as happened in October, that's a pretty good sign.
"The nice thing is, with our great facilities and program, it's possible for our kids to train as much as they can," said Kapala. "Take (reigning national J1 5k freestyle champion) Alexa Turzian. She has had some measure of success but what she's never stopped doing is training—and she does it on her own.
"When you want to get good at any individual sport, it's individual."
Assessing Turzian is a good place to start when looking at the prospects for Sun Valley's program, in its 35th year with another record turnout of 154 on the Comp, Prep and Development teams based at Lake Creek trail system north of Ketchum and Hailey's Quigley Canyon.
"It's our biggest team ever, 90 kids on the Devo Team alone, our most ever," said Kapala. "Enrollment and our coaching staff define the health of a program. We have a big base. Kids are excited about skiing."
Turzian, 18, became Sun Valley's 13th national champion by winning the J1 girls' 5k skate race March 10 during the 2006 Junior National Nordic Ski Championships at Houghton, Mich. And she was seventh in the national J1 10k classic race.
A Wood River High School senior, Turzian passed up her senior year on the highly-regarded Wolverine girls' soccer team in favor of dry land training. In August, she posted an incredible second-place finish in the National Intensity Camp 2.5k hill climb at Mars Hill in Caribou, Maine. Her senior teammate Mali Noyes was third in the same rigorous climb, 25 seconds back.
Turzian and Noyes along with Taylor Sundali, Reid Pletcher, Mike Matteson, Tess Dahlgren, Scott Krankkala and team manager Chelsea Vanderpool are the senior-class foundations of Sun Valley in 2006-07.
They showed they were ready to roll with some outstanding results during the visit of the 26-race, $130,000 Nordic SuperTour to Galena Lodge/Lake Creek Dec. 6-10.
Reid Pletcher, 18, was the leading junior and 12th place overall in a strong field of the men's 10k classic race at Galena Lodge Dec. 9. Turzian placed sixth in the women's 15k skate race Dec. 10 and ended up ninth in 5k classic, in each case the top junior in the field.
"I'm always Mr. Undersell when it comes to these things, but we had a good start with our SuperTour results," said Kapala. "It scares me a little, because we usually don't have great early results. But any time you have skiers like we have coming back for their senior year with a proven record of success, well, it'll happen."
Kapala and assistant Abi Holt will take Turzian, Noyes, Pletcher, Taylor Sundali, Matteson and Krankkala along with post-grad skiers Colin Struthers, Ian Havelick and Chris Holmquist to the U.S. Nordic Nationals and J1 Scandinavian Cup qualifiers Dec. 29-Jan. 7 on the Michigan Tech trails at Houghton.
Such hard-working seniors provide a benchmark for the younger kids, Kapala said. The talented J2 racers "really have to push it in training," to keep up with the seniors, he added. "I'm pretty psyched for this winter. We have some really promising young J2s and proven competitors in the boys and girls," he said.
The J2 group includes Max Durtschi, Travis Job, Sean Dumke, Scotty Phelan, Bronwen Raff, Makayla Cappel, Courtney Hamilton, Rosie Gilchrist and Julia Bowman.
"Abi and I will say to them that they have to keep up with skiers like Reid Pletcher, Taylor Sundali and Mike Matteson or, for the girls, they have to keep up with a two-time U.S. Scandinavian Cup racer like Mali Noyes, or a national champ like Alexa," said Kapala. "It's a good thing."
The coaching staff for 2006-07 has a good mix of returning coaches and new blood. Kapala said, "We have some continuity with our Prep Team and some new faces and alumni in the Devo teams.
"For our younger ages, the goal is to be a real good, well supervised after-school program. We're so lucky with our facilities and the kids being able to access them so easily. It makes it easy for kids to participate."
Even if the training, when they get older, gets tougher.
SuperTour at Soldier Hollow
The USSA Nordic SuperTour visited the 2002 Olympic cross-country ski trails at Soldier Hollow, Utah last weekend and Sun Valley Olympic Development racers competed.
Kate Whitcomb, 26, placed seventh in Saturday's women's 10k skate race and sixth in Sunday's sprint finals. Kate Underwood, 25, was 14th in the 10k freestyle event and eighth in the sprint finals.
The winner in both events was Laura Valaas, 22, a 2006 Whitman College graduate from Wenatchee, Wash. who is racing for Central Cross Country. She was fifth in the sprint at the 2006 U.S. Nationals.
Zack Simons, 25, finished sixth overall in Saturday's men's 15k skate race won by Canadian development racer Stephan Kuhn, 27. Lars Flora, 28, was 13th and Colin Rodgers, 25, crossed the line 14th of 67 racers. Colin Struthers, 19, was 37th, second in the junior class.
U.S. Ski Team racers Kris Freeman and Andy Newell went 1-2 in Sunday's men's sprint final. Flora placed sixth.
