Bozeman Training Camp Brings U23 Skiers Together For Summer Training

In late July, eight Para Nordic skiers from across the country were attending a training camp in Bozeman, Montana, when they heard the news that Salt Lake City will host the 2034 Winter Paralympics.

The announcement was a big deal for the group. It gave the five standing skiers and three sit skiers a goal to work toward as they took part in a weeklong training camp hosted by U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing.

The training camp, which ran from July 23-29, was designed for development athletes who are under the age of 23. That means all eight athletes who participated in it will still be young enough to possibly qualify for the Salt Lake City Winter Paralympics in a decade.

“This whole group, they all have the potential of being on that (U.S.) team (in 2034),” said BethAnn Chamberlain, a development coach with U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. “It sounds like it’s so far away, but in an endurance sport, it’s not. It takes some time.”

Chamberlain said all the athletes who were invited to the Bozeman camp have competed in Para Nordic skiing for at least one season. The group featured mostly teenagers who have shown potential in the sport, including Phillip Proctor (Vacaville, California), Adelaide Bielke (Stillwater, Minnesota) and Noah Oliver (Belgrade, Maine).

They spent the week training alongside each other. They worked on building their strength, improving their ski technique and learning the proper ways to train — all of which will help them when they’re with their respective ski clubs back home.

“It was kind of your typical, more junior training camp where we’re there to work on a lot of technical pieces of the sport,” Chamberlain said. “We had a great coaching staff, so we could provide athletes with a lot of feedback on that. Also, training camps are just a good opportunity for more training.

“Life is simplified because you eat at the dining hall, and your days are just about training. And so that was very much part of the objective as well, just a really solid week of training with the group.”

Chamberlain said this was the first time U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing has hosted a summer training camp for development athletes in Bozeman, where the organization is based. The athletes stayed on Montana State University’s campus during the week.

A year ago, U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing hosted a training camp for a small group of standing and visually impaired skiers in Lake Placid, New York, the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.

Chamberlain said U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing would ideally like to vary the locations of its development camps from one summer to the next to make travel easier for athletes who are spread out across the country.

“I think it’s highly beneficial (to train as a group). For one, you get to build a relationship with the athletes. You get to understand kind of how they respond, how they learn, having those face-to-face conversations,” Chamberlain said. “We watched video together at night, so we could do a training session and then review it. It’s so valuable.”

After holding a development camp in Lake Placid last summer, Chamberlain said the plan was to bring a group of athletes together at a location that was farther west. By hosting the camp in Bozeman, they could see where members of the U.S. national team train in the winter.

In addition, Paralympic gold medalist Sydney Peterson and several Paralympic hopefuls who train year-round at Crosscut Mountain Sports Center in Bozeman accompanied the development athletes during the training camp.

“They actually joined for a number of training sessions,” Chamberlain said. “Summer training is pretty standard, and so we had sessions where we had all the local athletes training with Crosscut this summer. They were joining us for interval days as well. They were doing their own intervals but were kind of right alongside them, and that was really cool. They were definitely involved.”

Along with training, the group of development athletes participated in a roller ski race that Bridger Ski Foundation, a ski organization based in Bozeman, hosted on July 26. It provided the athletes with another opportunity to experience what it’s like to prepare for a race and then compete in it.

“It’s like they’re a team. They’re not named to any official team, but they’re working together and they’re developing together,” Chamberlain said. “And to have a number of them doing that, it’s been pretty new to us in our sport. I think it’s just really, really great for development.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.