I'm pleased to announce that the day you've been waiting for has finally arrived!  It's time for the annual Seawolf NCAA Championship Fan Guide! On the one hand, the NCAAs will take place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado - one of my very favorite places for ski racing. On the other hand, I'm writing this from the Seattle airport, where our connecting flight to Colorado has just cancelled, throwing into question our travel itinerary for the next several hours (or days). Be that as it may, the following are the Seawolf athletes and coaches on this year's NCAA Championship team: Carmen N ..read more

 Not everyone can be a World Champion. After all, there’s only one world. And there’s a limited number of sports that can be contested on this earth. So that limits the number of possible world champions. Nevertheless, we have a newly-crowned world champion on our UAA Ski Team. Derek Deuling spent a portion of this month racing World Cup races in Switzerland and competing at the Under-23 World Championships in Slovenia. And it was there that Derek, along with his Canadian teammates, won the world championship relay.  I heard the news of Derek’s glorious success from Trond Flagstad, i ..read more

The view from the top of the slalom course at Howelsen Hill. (from Ainsley Proffit's perspective.)  This team enjoys coming to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It's usually sunny, the snow is cold and dry, and there are good trails to ski on. And we usually get to cheer on our alpine teammates in a night slalom race at Howelsen Hill, just across the Yampa River from Steamboat's main street. The University of Colorado hosts their meet here each year. But this year, they're also hosting the NCAA Championships here in March. So we get to come back twice! Waiting around for the awa ..read more

Tuva Bygrave I write this from the airport in Portland, Oregon. I've become separated from my team. They're in Alaska's capitol city, Juneau. They stayed overnight there last night, after leaving Salt Lake City at the break of dawn, flying to Portland, Oregon, then Seattle, Washington, and finally northward to the rainforest of Alaska's southeast panhandle. Meanwhile, my flight out of Salt Lake City was delayed until eventually my connections back to Anchorage couldn't be made. I was rebooked on a ticket that would have had me spending four days in Portland before being able to get a ..read more

It was a big loss for the team last spring when Toomas Kollo ended his tenure as the Nordic Team's Graduate Assistant Coach to move on to greener pastures.  But the timing of his departure was right, as Tuva Granøien finished up her undergraduate degree last spring and was interested in pursuing a Master's of Business Administration. So Tuva's our new Graduate Assistant Coach! But Tuva's not satisfied to just hang out in the wax room and stand beside the race trail calling out splits. Last week, she asked Trond for a half-hour leave of absence from the wax room so she could compete in ..read more

 Heber City, Utah is our home base for the next two weeks. Soldier Hollow, site of the 2002 and 2034 Olympics, is our playground. There's a lot more sun than there is in Alaska, and a lot less snow.  Tuva Granøien has exchanged her racing bib for a coaching bib this winter. It's been a seamless transition. Part of the job of assistant coach is learning the tools of the trade. Here's Trond, showing Tuva what skis are. And sometimes we coaches need to wax some skis. Pascale King of the downhills today, Matteus Sokulsky. Beth Grans ..read more

The view out my window onto my deck as I write this. The training season has ended. Now the racing season begins. It's winter solstice. It's dark in the north, but the snow lies deep and fluffy on the ground. The skiing here is so good now! There's no place I'd rather be at the moment.  Before snow came to Anchorage, we had a week of amazing ice skating on alpine lakes that would normally be covered in snow. It was an opportunity not to be missed! But our team is scattered far and wide. And I'm flying to Utah tomorrow. We have to go where the races are. The word on the s ..read more

Just like in XC skiing, rudimentary drills are necessary at the start of the season. Everyone knows that alpine skiers like to do their sport on a tilted sheet of boilerplate ice. Powder days?  No thank you. If it does snow, we plow the new snow off to the side so we can get back down to the ice again, and we ski on that. We in alpine ski racing call that ice sheet a "good surface".  Ski lessons are in session. It started snowing heavily in Anchorage last week, and now we're in the midst of setting a new all-time November record for snowfall in Anchorage. Several fe ..read more

Last March, about a half-hour after the award ceremony at the NCAA Championships in Lake Placid, as Toomas and I were cleaning and packing up the wax cabin after a long week, Trond burst in with a giddy smile on his face and said, "Hey Adam! Your hero, Fred Fayette, is right outside the door! You should go out and say hello." And of course I did, but it was a little hard to get a private audience with him at that particular moment, because others had also noticed that Fred was in the parking lot, and lots of folks wanted to come over and chat with him, since he hadn't been seen around the venu ..read more

After this week's snowstorm, it's pretty safe to say that dryland training has ended for the year. We're glad to be on snow now. But just in case you want a little more rollerski action, here are a few shots from a month ago ..read more