Greetings NENSA Community,

In the spirit of the season, I am so pleased to share some special and heartwarming news with you this week.

In this week’s KickZone

• Announcing The John Ogden Youth and Introductory Program Endowment
• 2024 BKL Festival Registration is Open!
• Swix Apparel Program for NENSA BKL Clubs
• Eastern Cup Honors Roy Varney
• On Deck: Jackson JauntXC Ski & Snacks Tour | January 15, 2023
• Tour de Stowe | January 20, 2023
• Nordic Team Solutions – Virtual Technique Talk
• NENSA Women's Day 2024
• NENSA Membership
• NENSA Winter Events Poster
• Scenes from the Community

From Our Partners

• Bivo: Skate Skiing Tips for Beginners
• Garnet Hill Lodge: Special offer for NENSA members

In The News

• Nordic Insights: World Cup Period 1 Review: What Did the American Skiers Learn?
• Nordic Insights: USSS Announces American Nominations for Tour de Ski
• US Ski & Snowboard: The Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team Announces the Team for Period 2 of the 2023-24 World Cup Season & Tour de Ski

From our entire team at NENSA, we send heartfelt wishes of joy, peace, and adventure this season and through the coming year. Happy Holidays!

All my best,

Heidi

Heidi Lange

Executive Director

New England Nordic Ski Association

heidi@nensa.net

www.nensa.net

Memberships directly support all of our year-round programming,

backing us in our mission to nurture and sustain an active cross country ski

community for all ages and levels throughout the East. 

Thank you for taking a minute to join or renew your NENSA membership,

and for the important support that it provides!

NENSA trustees and the Ogden family are thrilled to announce the endowment of NENSA’s youth programming position, the John Ogden Youth & Introductory Program Director.

Made possible through the legacy John left and the overwhelming response of family, friends, and dedicated supporters, the endowment secures the future of NENSA by supporting the growth & health of youth programming.

In a seminar for BKL coaches, John Ogden proposed this guiding principle, inspired by a Ben and Jerry’s bumper sticker, “If it’s not fun why do it?”. That wisdom and insight guided him throughout decades spent with NENSA as a skier, coach, parent, and board member. John was a loud and passionate champion of FUN youth and introductory ski programming.

He believed that teaching kids how to love sport was infinitely more important than teaching them to excel. His goal was always to develop happy, healthy humans rather than elite athletes. Even so, he ended up fostering an environment within his own home club and throughout NENSA that boasts a community encompassing everyone from top-level Olympic skiers to the thousands of New England kids who try skiing for the first time each winter through NENSA’s Nordic Rocks Program.

NENSA and long-time sponsor, Swix, are teaming up to offer the BKL Apparel program again this year! We’ve updated the webpage below with this year's program and to address your questions. Please take the time to read through this information before contacting Swix. We look forward to seeing you in Swix this winter!

In the weeks leading up to the Roy Varney Eastern Cup Memorial all was cool and collected — allowing for the organizing committee to focus on creating an exceptional event. Despite one, (five inches of rain) weather event, it seemed like Quarry Road Trail had cracked the code of community, volunteerism, and creating artificial snow — and indeed they have. However, for the fourth week in a row, a wet and warm storm cycle ravaged the East the evening after Sunday’s events, damaging not just Quarry Road’s race track — but threatening roadways and communities across our region. Hard work makes good luck — how more properly could we summarize the 2023 Roy Varney Memorial Eastern Cup. #forroy

We had some really crazy weather Sunday and Monday! JacksonXC ‘s snowpack was hard hit along with most of the rest of New England. Fortunately JacksonXC invested in snowmaking last season and plans to have a loop opened later this week on the Wentworth Golf Course trails. They will host the Jackson Jaunt on this loop early in the morning on December 31st. This chill interval start race event will be in classic style for the first time in several years. Ring in the New Year with some fun ski racing and camaraderie at JacksonXC!

The XC Ski and Snacks Tour at JacksonXC is postponed

THANK YOU TO OUR SILVER SPONSORS

NENSA memberships expire on April 30 and must be renewed annually. Now is a perfect time to check your membership status and take care of your renewal as various announcements of a fun and full winter season are being rolled out!

Membership directly supports our year-round programming, backing us in our mission to nurture and sustain an active cross country ski community for all ages and levels throughout the East. Thank you for taking a minute to tend to your renewal, and for the important support your membership provides!

NENSA membership provides...

• Access to Eastern Cup, Bill Koch Festival, and U16 and Eastern High School Championship events
• Education at Eastern Coaches Conferences and TD/Event Organizer Seminars
• Eligibility for the NENSA Development and Elite Teams and the New England Junior National Team
• Discounted entry to NENSA events
• Scoring and ranking in our Eastern Cup, Popular, and Rollerski series
• NENSA Kickzone and Trail Tales youth newsletter subscriptions
• Exclusive discounts and special offers from NENSA sponsors, continually updated on the Member Benefits page
• Access to the NENSA Gear Swap

U.S. Ski & Snowboard works to provide a safe environment in which athletes can train and compete, free from abuse and inappropriate behavior. Please review U.S. Ski & Snowboard's Athlete Safety policies, the SafeSport Code, and the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies and join us in sustaining a culture of safety.

If you are an athlete who has experienced inappropriate behavior or know of an athlete who has experienced inappropriate behavior, report a concern:

The U.S. Center for SafeSport

Hotline:  833-587-7233

Report:  CLICK HERE

U.S. Ski & Snowboard

Report: CLICK HERE

We all are part of promoting a culture of safety through education, listening, and speaking up.

THANK YOU TO OUR BRONZE SPONSORS

Skate Skiing Tips for Beginners

by Charlotte Ogden | December 20, 2023

Snow fell in early December in Richmond and the office morning runs transitioned into skis at the local nordic center, Sleepy Hollow! As a recently retired member of the Middlebury nordic ski team and new member of the Bivo team, these group skis are helping me settle into my first winter skiing entirely for fun and my own joy! I’ve been shuffling around on nordic skis since I could walk, and growing up in Vermont instilled a deep love of snow and all winter activities in me that will last a lifetime. I know that a lot of the Bivo readers are big cyclists, so I figured that a blog with some skate skiing tips for cyclists could be a pretty good idea. I’m no expert, but I hope that with 8+ years of being coached by the best in the biz (thank you AJ and Sverre), I will have picked up a few essential tips that I can pass on to anyone looking to get into the sport!

Lodging Offer for NENSA Members

NENSA members receive free 20% discount off standard published rates from Jan 2 through Jan 18 and during all of March.

Contact Garnet Hill Lodge, provide your 2023-24 NENSA membership number to make a reservation, and present your valid NENSA member card (you receive this on your confirmation email after renewing or joining NENSA) when checking in.

World Cup Period 1 Review: What Did the American Skiers Learn?

by Nordic Insights | December 19, 2023

Sunday’s 10-kilometer classic in Trondheim marked the tenth and final race of Period 1 of the 2023/2024 World Cup season. The American skiers have since uniformly scattered for somewhere warmer and sunnier to recover before the Tour de Ski (or U.S. Nationals, or whatever comes next for a given athlete).

By any results-based standard, it was a phenomenally successful 3+ weeks for the American team. There were only three races in which an American woman did not stand on the podium (and in two of those races an American woman finished fourth). Jessie Diggins had four podiums. Rosie Brennan had three. The American women had a relay podium. JC Schoonmaker claimed a breakthrough World Cup podium in his 25th career start, the first American men’s podium since Simi Hamilton and, along with Ben Ogden’s fourth, part of the single most successful day for American men’s World Cup skiing in nearly 17 years.

But there are more than just those four athletes skiing on the World Cup for the U.S. this year, and the athletes who finish on the podium would be the first to tell you that they wouldn’t be up there without the rest of the team alongside them (like, literally so on relay day, but conceptually even more so in the sense that they are pushed and motivated by their teammates year-round). So I asked multiple athletes, plus one coach, what they had learned from Period 1 of this season and what’s something that they liked about the start of this year, be it either directly ski-related or something completely off the race course.

USSS Announces American Nominations for Tour de Ski

by Nordic Insights | December 21, 2023

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced the eight men and six women nominated to race on the World Cup in Period 2 of the 2023/2024 SuperTour season, i.e., the Tour de Ski.

For the men, the athletes are: Michael Earnhart, Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, Kevin Bolger, Zanden McMullen, John Steel Hagenbuch, and Scott Patterson.

For the women, the athletes are: Sammy Smith, Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, Sophia Laukli, and Novie McCabe.

The Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team Announces the Team for Period 2 of the 2023-24 World Cup Season & Tour de Ski

by Chris Grover | December 22, 2023

Dear Cross Country Community,

We are pleased to announce the Team for Period 2 of the 2023-24 World Cup season – the Tour de Ski

THANK YOU TO OUR OFFICIAL SUPPLIERS

New England Nordic Ski Association

P.O. Box 97

Lyme, NH 03768

Phone: 802-331-0762