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#1
July 6th 04, 12:28 AM
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Collegiate skiing
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#2
July 6th 04, 07:37 PM
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Collegiate skiing
Concerning the threads on college skiing: obviously a lot of us have
strong opinions about this based on personal experience and a passion for developing skiers, especially the US kind. I used to race against Torry Kraftson when I skied for CU and he skied at Utah, and Ric Schaaf was on the CU team the year before I came on. I think we all had similar experiences - competing on top-level NCAA programs that were roughly 60%/40% foreigners/Americans at first as walk-ons and then as scholarship athletes. College skiing is not the only answer to the US's development problems. Nor is it the problem. Foreigners receive 68% (or whatever) of scholarships because they beat the pants off of Americans, not because they are given some unfair, discriminatory advantage. NCAA skiing is one facet of skiing in this country and it is what it is: 1. Arguably the top level of consistent competition in North America. 2. A source of immense financial and technical resources not available from any clubs in this country, nor through the US development team. 3. Pretty much the only place in the US where top US skiers can go to train in a team environment with skiers that are much better than they are. A common theme that you will see is that Americans who have seen success at the college level all describe NCAA skiing as the greatest thing ever. Ask any American who went to college with foreigners about their experience and they will get frustrated when people complain about the lack of American scholarship winners. We all worked very hard to compete against foreigners for scholarship money and starting spots on these competitive teams, but the reason we were able to develop our skiing to that level was because of the foreigners sharing their technical experience and pushing us to that level. Without the foreigners there, we all would have had scholarships from day one, but we would stink as skiers and never been able to get to where we are (or were). Pete Vordenberg is a great example of this. One of the most talented skiers in the country at the time, he could have written his ticket to any college he wanted. He chose to go to Northern Michigan and because of the great coaching of Sten Fjeldheim and the athletes that chose to go there because of Pete, Pete had a good experience. However, I think that Pete probably would have become a much better skier if he had gone to school with a bunch of skiers who were better than him. That was my experience at CU - in one year there I went from never seeing Pete in a race to being able to beat him occasionally. While it was difficult because I had to work my way to a scholarship, the benefits of having top NCAA skiers to train with are what made me into a decent ski racer. I believe that an "open-market" approach has to be continued. NCAA teams are under increasing budgetary pressure as state and federal funding of colleges is reduced and it will only make ski teams disappear faster if we artificially reduce the level of competition by enforcing some sort of mandatory minimum "native" american count. Most college coaches like to develop Americans when they can, but they are under more and more pressure to compete with fewer resources. Most of the time, when college coaches are developing Americans it is because they are taking the responsibility on themselves and making it happen, not because they are given extra time and money to do so. I personally believe that the college coaches have a moral obligation to go this extra mile and that not all of them are doing what they can or should. But at the same time, I could also volunteer my time to create a CU development program, but I don't because it would be a huge volunteer commitment that I'm not willing to shoulder myself. So why should we expect college coaches to do this work for free? We can hope that they will, but it is a bit much to require this of them. It is important to note that financially, a foreign scholarship athlete does not cost the school any more than an American on scholarship. Schools are very limited by NCAA rules in how many scholarships they can give and these scholarships are strictly defined in NCAA rules so that the amount of money given for room and board is basically the same everywhere. So while the "big-budget" schools have more money for training camps and travel, the bottom line for recruiting is that rich schools cannot really offer much more than the other schools in terms of financial assistance to athletes. The thing that differentiates the big schools from smaller ones are the facilities and the other athletes on the team. I believe that DU has a total of 3.2 scholarships available for it's men's and women's XC teams combined. So it is not like every athlete there is rolling in dough. Many of them are paying something out of pocket for education. Although I do believe that a lot of Norwegians get a pretty big educational subsidy from the Norwegian government. But that might not be true any longer. Maybe the problem is that Norwegians get too much money to go to school from their government.... I will admit that there is a serious dearth of Americans in college skiing. But the problem is not college skiing, but a instituitionally disabled American club development system and whining Americans. We need to get more Americans skiing at the level where they can walk on to an NCAA program and compete for scholarships. That is the root of the problem. Buck up, ski fast, and get a scholarship. The bottom line is that we are not doing our jobs as coaches and clubs in getting the skiers there. One thing that is interesting is that most foreign NCAA skiers are a few years older than the Americans just out of high school, so they are more developed physically and technically. This is largely due to the European club support systems. I don't think we are going to be able to create a similar system or that it is even a good idea for US skiers to wait to go to college. But I think that we need to adjust the expectation that Americans should be able to walk into scholarships out of high school. It needs to be known that it may take one or two years of walking on before they get to that level. We need to build clubs so that Americans have a place to get support from age 19-25. Except in very rare cases, skiers are not breaking through on the World Cup until age 22 or 23. We need to deliver them to the NCAA level by age 20 so they can develop to the elite level by age 25 when they are matured as athletes. Things have definitely been improving with Luke Bodensteiner at USSA (former NCAA champion with the Utes) working to include college skiing with USSA development. Pete's and Trond's experiences with NCAA skiing have also made the USST much more open and integrated with college skiing. This has resulted in a huge change over past years and opens the door for using the vast amount of resources available from NCAA skiing to help with US development goals which have very paltry resources dedicated to the task. Unfortunately, what really needs to happen is for the USSA to take on a huge educational effort for coaching and club systems in this country. Coaches need to know more about what it takes to develop a junior to this level and junior athletes need to be exposed the senior skiing early on so they can see where they need to go. Trond, Pete and Chris (USST coaches) have managed a valiant effort with education so far, but they have too many other things on their plates to take on this huge project and the resources they have available are barely enough to get the current US team to the races, let alone fund a national educational development effort. As to JD's assertion that "the NCAA experience in its current format has produced zero returns in the way of top ten World Cup results." That is dubious. While it is literally true, it silly to say that Carl Swenson's and Kris Freeman's college careers had nothing to do with their current success. Also, it is important to note that we've had a handful of World Cup top-tens in the last 5 years (Swenson (2), Freeman (4) and Wadsworth(1)), so if you want to get literal, not much except racing full-time on the World Cup has produced top-tens. There is a long list of athletes who were not necessarily household ski names until after spending four years developing at college like Andrew Johnson, David Chamberlain, Justin Freeman, Chad Giese and me. Furthermore, while not breaking out onto the World Cup, many foreign college skiers are going home to top results. Sigrid Aas, had several top-30 sprint results on the World Cup and a 4th place at Norwegian Nationals before she won NCAA's this year. Unni Odegaard won a Norwegian National Championship and several Scandinavian Cups two years out of CU. The problem isn't that we're giving too many foreigners opportunities here, it is that we aren't taking advantage of these opportunities ourselves. The system is not in place to get our skiers to the NCAA level where they could receive these resources and valuable training opportunites, and the few US athletes who do succeed at college almost always quit after they spend a few years struggling through the void of support after college. What do we do? Build regional development teams like Sun Valley and Boulder Nordic are trying to do. My idea has always been to try to make it work so that we have a team of U23 skiers here that can be affiliated with CU as walk-ons or can just be on the team. Unfortunately, it's really expensive and not very romantic to develop these skiers, but it needs to get done. Their results are not likely going to generate huge exposure. There is a perception in this country that if you're 21 you're an adult and you should make your own way in the world. People are not very keen on giving to a bunch of young adults who may not produce significant results for 3-5 years. But this is what we need to do to get more Americans to the NCAA scholarship level and furthermore to make the step up from NCAA to the World Cup. Sorry for ranting... -Nathan
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#4
July 7th 04, 07:03 AM
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Collegiate skiing
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#5
July 7th 04, 01:10 PM
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Collegiate skiing
Hi Nathan-
Don't apologize for the "rant"! Your response was well-reasoned, and has the big advantage of coming from someone who is intimately familiar with both the programs and the players, ahd who has been closely watching and analyzing the progress of the sport from the inside. It seems like you could very easily develop these ideas into an article for a publication (or website) that would get the attention of coaches, college administrators and the like. You may not necessarily have "the answers", but you have definitely thrown a lot of really good ideas into the pot where some of the solutions might be developed. Thanks for ranting! Chris Cline --- Nathan Schultz wrote: Concerning the threads on college skiing: obviously a lot of us have strong opinions about this based on personal experience and a passion for developing skiers, especially the US kind. I used to race against Torry Kraftson when I skied for CU and he skied at Utah, and Ric Schaaf was on the CU team the year before I came on. I think we all had similar experiences - competing on top-level NCAA programs that were roughly 60%/40% foreigners/Americans at first as walk-ons and then as scholarship athletes. College skiing is not the only answer to the US's development problems. Nor is it the problem. Foreigners receive 68% (or whatever) of scholarships because they beat the pants off of Americans, not because they are given some unfair, discriminatory advantage. NCAA skiing is one facet of skiing in this country and it is what it is: 1. Arguably the top level of consistent competition in North America. 2. A source of immense financial and technical resources not available from any clubs in this country, nor through the US development team. 3. Pretty much the only place in the US where top US skiers can go to train in a team environment with skiers that are much better than they are. A common theme that you will see is that Americans who have seen success at the college level all describe NCAA skiing as the greatest thing ever. Ask any American who went to college with foreigners about their experience and they will get frustrated when people complain about the lack of American scholarship winners. We all worked very hard to compete against foreigners for scholarship money and starting spots on these competitive teams, but the reason we were able to develop our skiing to that level was because of the foreigners sharing their technical experience and pushing us to that level. Without the foreigners there, we all would have had scholarships from day one, but we would stink as skiers and never been able to get to where we are (or were). Pete Vordenberg is a great example of this. One of the most talented skiers in the country at the time, he could have written his ticket to any college he wanted. He chose to go to Northern Michigan and because of the great coaching of Sten Fjeldheim and the athletes that chose to go there because of Pete, Pete had a good experience. However, I think that Pete probably would have become a much better skier if he had gone to school with a bunch of skiers who were better than him. That was my experience at CU - in one year there I went from never seeing Pete in a race to being able to beat him occasionally. While it was difficult because I had to work my way to a scholarship, the benefits of having top NCAA skiers to train with are what made me into a decent ski racer. I believe that an "open-market" approach has to be continued. NCAA teams are under increasing budgetary pressure as state and federal funding of colleges is reduced and it will only make ski teams disappear faster if we artificially reduce the level of competition by enforcing some sort of mandatory minimum "native" american count. Most college coaches like to develop Americans when they can, but they are under more and more pressure to compete with fewer resources. Most of the time, when college coaches are developing Americans it is because they are taking the responsibility on themselves and making it happen, not because they are given extra time and money to do so. I personally believe that the college coaches have a moral obligation to go this extra mile and that not all of them are doing what they can or should. But at the same time, I could also volunteer my time to create a CU development program, but I don't because it would be a huge volunteer commitment that I'm not willing to shoulder myself. So why should we expect college coaches to do this work for free? We can hope that they will, but it is a bit much to require this of them. It is important to note that financially, a foreign scholarship athlete does not cost the school any more than an American on scholarship. Schools are very limited by NCAA rules in how many scholarships they can give and these scholarships are strictly defined in NCAA rules so that the amount of money given for room and board is basically the same everywhere. So while the "big-budget" schools have more money for training camps and travel, the bottom line for recruiting is that rich schools cannot really offer much more than the other schools in terms of financial assistance to athletes. The thing that differentiates the big schools from smaller ones are the facilities and the other athletes on the team. I believe that DU has a total of 3.2 scholarships available for it's men's and women's XC teams combined. So it is not like every athlete there is rolling in dough. Many of them are paying something out of pocket for education. Although I do believe that a lot of Norwegians get a pretty big educational subsidy from the Norwegian government. But that might not be true any longer. Maybe the problem is that Norwegians get too much money to go to school from their government.... I will admit that there is a serious dearth of Americans in college skiing. But the problem is not college skiing, but a instituitionally disabled American club development system and whining Americans. We need to get more Americans skiing at the level where they can walk on to an NCAA program and compete for scholarships. That is the root of the problem. Buck up, ski fast, and get a scholarship. The bottom line is that we are not doing our jobs as coaches and clubs in getting the skiers there. One thing that is interesting is that most foreign NCAA skiers are a few years older than the Americans just out of high school, so they are more developed physically and technically. This is largely due to the European club support systems. I don't think we are going to be able to create a similar system or that it is even a good idea for US skiers to wait to go to college. But I think that we need to adjust the expectation that Americans should be able to walk into scholarships out of high school. It needs to be known that it may take one or two years of walking on before they get to that level. We need to build clubs so that Americans have a place to get support from age 19-25. Except in very rare cases, skiers are not breaking through on the World Cup until age 22 or 23. We need to deliver them to the NCAA level by age 20 so they can develop to the elite === message truncated === __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
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#6
July 7th 04, 03:19 PM
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Collegiate skiing
Wasn't Pete V a national champion?
He could have been better than a national champ if he had gone elsewhere? I think you, like me, just are a late bloomer Nathan... As a high schooler everyone kicked my butt, as I got older I kicked many of theirs... You, like fine wine, got better with age. Certainly training like a mad man with good skiers helped too ! JK Pete Vordenberg is a great example of this. One of the most talented skiers in the country at the time, he could have written his ticket to any college he wanted. He chose to go to Northern Michigan and because of the great coaching of Sten Fjeldheim and the athletes that chose to go there because of Pete, Pete had a good experience. However, I think that Pete probably would have become a much better skier if he had gone to school with a bunch of skiers who were better than him. That was my experience at CU - in one year there I went from never seeing Pete in a race to being able to beat him occasionally. While it was difficult because I had to work my way to a scholarship, the benefits of having top NCAA skiers to train with are what made me into a decent ski racer.
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#7
July 13th 04, 04:00 PM
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Collegiate skiing
"32 degrees" wrote in message ...
Wasn't Pete V a national champion? He could have been better than a national champ if he had gone elsewhere? Yes, that is what I'm saying: he could have been better. I'm not saying he was a bad skier by any means. He was NCAA champion in 1993 and 2nd in 1994 and an Olympian in 1992 and 1994. He, like many other Americans, got to that level and never peaked on his potential. I think that he might have been better if he had been pushed during those college years, rather than leading his team and not really facing much competition until NCAA's each year. -Nathan
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