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Wednesday, July 26, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Endurance academy draws skiers
By Victoria Jacobsen
The Bulletin
BEND (AP) — Bend has
never been much of a college
town, but it is a place where
college students — especially
college athletes — want to
spend summer vacation.
“Bend has been a go-to
place for people to summer
train for forever: When I was
an athlete, I moved here in the
early ’90s because the sum-
mer training was so good,”
said Ben Husaby, a former
Nordic skier who com-
peted at the 1992 and 1994
Winter Olympics and is the
longtime executive direc-
tor of Bend Endurance
Academy.
“I think late-season snow
helps. This year, there was
good skiing even into June.
The roads used to be not very
crowded, so it was good for
roller skiing. There’s great
mountain biking, I think that’s
a big draw now. The dry cli-
mate has a lot to do with it.
It used to be very affordable,
although that’s changed a lit-
tle bit. It’s just a good place to
train.”
After BEA opened in 2009,
many local skiers would
return home during college
breaks and lift weights and
train with the younger kids at
their former club. Meanwhile,
groups of college skiers from
across the country trickled
into Bend each summer and
tried to stay on task without
the aid of a coach.
“They weren’t always that
organized, and they mostly
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weren’t part of programs,”
Husaby said of the visiting
college students. “So we just
decided that we would market
that, and we would go after
that group. We’d see these
kids come out, and they’d
train kind of well for a while,
but it was really hard for
them to be consistent. People
do better when there’s a van
waiting for them at the top
and the bottom of a hill, and
there’s water and instruction.”
Since reaching out to vis-
iting college skiers, BEA’s
summer training group has
grown to be one of the larg-
est in the country. This sum-
mer, the group includes 30
NCAA athletes from colleges
on both coasts, as well as 22
local middle school and high
school students who have
signed up to train alongside
the collegians.
Zoe Snow, a rising senior
at Dartmouth College in New
Hampshire, said she decided
to train in Bend at the recom-
mendation of her teammate
Emily Hyde, a 2015 Summit
High School grad who
trained with Bend-based Mt.
Bachelor Sports Education
Foundation.
“(Hyde) really enjoyed
the program out here,”
Snow said after an afternoon
weight training session at the
BEA facility last week. “We
decided to get a group of girls
out here to train.”
“I just followed her,”
added Cate Brams, a rising
senior at Middlebury College
in Vermont who has skied
with Snow since the two were
fifth-graders living in the
Boston area. “She’s like, this
is our last summer training, so
I’m going out to Bend. You
should come.”
The training group meets
eight times a week: Most
weekdays start with a morn-
ing workout on roller skis,
and Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday afternoons are spent
in the weight room at BEA’s
new headquarters.
“The idea is that we do
all of the hard work, we do
all of the focused training
here,” BEA Nordic director
Bernie Nelson said during a
strength and conditioning ses-
sion where the athletes pow-
ered through sets of modified
pushups, lunges and weighted
situps. “But they get to play,
too. You know, five-hour
hikes, that’s good training for
them. I leave their weekends
open, and I also leave a cou-
ple afternoons open so they
can go and enjoy the trails and
take part in the Bend life that
we all take for granted.”
Several of the visiting ski-
ers said their favorite part of
the summer is the weekend.
They are still supposed to do
something athletic, but they
are allowed to choose the
activity and where they would
like to explore.
“I do a lot of backcoun-
try skiing, so I got to South
Sister on my birthday in June,
which was pretty sweet,”
said Bill Harmeyer, who is
preparing for his sophomore
season at the University of
Vermont. “There was so much
snow.”
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