Valentine's Day Tribute

It has been nearly two years since Gustavus Adolphus College cut their nordic ski team. I graduated from Gustavus in 2005, having transferred there as a sophomore after Carleton College cut their ski team in 2002. By the time Gustavus cut their team, I had seen other teams fall - Macalester, St Mary's, St John's - there were no longer enough teams for the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) to support nordic skiing. I am resigned to this decision - I have never seen one like it reversed. But since Gustavus' decision I have had opportunities to see how my experiences there have shaped my course in life, sometimes in unexpected and amazing ways. I was recently given a picture that tells one of these stories.

In my love of the sport, I used it as vehicle in many ways. I chose to get my Masters' degree in Colorado mostly because I could still ski there. Skiing allowed me to work at The Loppet Foundation, where I got to learn about worlds very different from mine, but only a few miles away, on the North Side of Minneapolis. But this is not about these stories. This story begins during my time at Carleton.

Carleton announced the demise of the team a few days before our first race. So, my excitement and nerves to return to racing for the season were mixed with disappointment. At the races that followed, my parents met the parents of my teammates and began to rally against the decision to cut the team. The only team to have previously been cut - St Mary's - had died a death of attrition. When St Mary's cut, there was only one skier left and no one to really put up a fight. But Carleton was different. Chris, Russ, Nate, Liz, Eulaila, Marissa, Evelyn - my teammates - were strong racers. Previous graduates had qualified for NCAAs and two very recent graduate - Peter and Owen - were racing semi-professionally, touring European marathons for Rossignol.

At the time I remember my mother and father often working with my teammate Nate's father - Tom, a lawyer from St Paul - to try to find ways to appeal to the Carleton administration. These same types of appeals were tried at Macalester, and St John's and ultimately Gustavus. They have never worked. This is a picture of my father and Tom at - what I believe is - Giant's Ridge, where Carleton raced at the CCSA Regionals in what became its last race as an NCAA ski school.

That spring, Nate and I took a road trip to Madison, Wisconsin, where we ran a marathon. The next year, he would stay at Carleton and finish his senior year. I transferred to Gustavus and continued to race. At this point Nate and I began to orbit each other but saw each other rarely. He started Medical School at the University of Minnesota where he was a student of my father's. His wife Kim worked closely with my father when she was named chief resident for internal medicine at the University. My father updated me occasionally on Nate and would tell me when he ran into Tom and his wife Janet, but I really had little contact with them beyond that.

In the spring of 2014, I was running on the River Road and crossed paths with Nate. Like I usually do when I see someone I know, I turned and ran with him for a while. I know he was married and had started a family. We talked a little about that - his 2nd child was born around that time. Knowing I had been working as a coach for Loppet and Endurance United, he asked me about training groups - wanting to get back into racing.

I did not see Nate again that spring, but on May 6 at the first session of the year-round adult training group I lead, I met a beautiful girl with a broad smile and the same last name - his sister Naomi. But, being the coach of the group, I did not think I should be dating people from the group. Therefore, so much fell to Naomi's quiet courage. At a social hour after practice late in August she asked me if I'd like to go biking - just us, apart from the group. What did I do next? I almost blew it. I went to South Dakota for a long weekend with my Gustavus friend Scott, and didn't set up my date with Naomi for over a week. She admitted later that she had all but given up on me when I actually sent the email (I didn't even have her phone number yet) to set up our first date. On September 5 we went for a bike ride. Her hand was in a brace after she had injured her thumb on a previous bike fall. This probably made me even more vigilant than usual - keeping me on alert for obstacles or debris as we rode through Fort Snelling, Mendota and Lilydale and returned to the Longfellow Grill. We ended our ride. As she turned to get her bike to ride home, I touched her back, said goodbye and began to ride home. We will be married this July.

I get choked up when I look at the old picture of Tom and Wes. It is like reading again the first sentence of your favorite book. The start of a story you know well but still moves you. But unlike characters in a book, the people in this story can hear me when I say thank you. Thank you to John Strand and Fred Kueffer who built the team at Roseville where I learned to love skiing. Thank you to Mike Nightingale, Scott Jerome and Jed Fredrich - my coaches in college where my teammates became my closest friends. Thank you to Ben Popp, John Munger, Mark Skildum and Kevin Brochman who let me learn to coach skiing working at their incredible organizations. Thank you to my friends from Carleton and Gustavus and all the CCSA ski schools and to all the kids and adults I have coached. Thank you to my parents - Wes and Nancy - and my soon to be parents - Tom and Janet. Thank you, especially, Naomi. I love you. Happy Valentines day to everyone in ski world and good luck at the Birkie.