By Gavin Kentch
A pair of recent program announcements coming out of Vermont has collectively led to what counts as major change in the relatively static world of high-level American nordic skiing. In Stratton Mountain, SMS T2 has a new head coach, the program’s fourth in the last four seasons. A hundred-plus miles to the north, in Underhill, Mansfield Nordic Club has announced that it is now accepting athlete applications for a new pro team, Mansfield Pro Nordic. Read on for more.
The news out of Stratton came in the form of a Thursday press release, which you may read in full here.
“Colin Rodgers will join the team as Program Director and Head Coach,” the team wrote. “SMST2 board chair Sverre Caldwell said, ‘Colin’s experience and proven success as a leader will be tremendous assets for both the athletes individually and the team as a whole. Most importantly, he understands how quickly both the world and our sport are changing. He brings the vision, energy, and focus necessary to evolve the program successfully.’”
Rodgers spent the past nine years at Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield. Rodgers was previously a coach for the Sun Valley Gold Team, and before that was an athlete with that team. He skied collegiately for Middlebury, graduating from there in 2004. Rodgers grew up in Westford. He has strong Vermont roots, to put it mildly.
“I’m both honored and excited to join the SMST2 Team,” Rodgers says in the press release. “My primary role will be first to listen to and learn about who each athlete is and what each athlete feels they need to reach their full potential. Then, I will direct my efforts to best support them in their respective journeys. At the same time, while skiing excellence is often perceived as an individual pursuit, my role is to create an empowered, proactive and supportive team culture which can greatly increase the odds of success for all.”
Rodgers becomes the fourth head coach at SMS T2 — one of the country’s, and world’s, deepest ski clubs — in the past three years. Pat O’Brien led the squad for eight years, from 2014 through 2022, stepping down in anticipation of his wife, Ida Sargent, having the couple’s first child later that year. Perry Thomas succeeded O’Brien as head coach in spring 2022. Maria Stuber came on board as program director in spring 2023, leading the program along with Thomas over the following eighteen months.
[Read more: Perry Thomas to Step Down as Head Coach at SMS]
After Thomas left the team somewhat abruptly, for personal reasons, in October 2024, Stuber officially became head coach for the upcoming 2024/2025 race season, though she had previously also served in coaching and teching roles even when her job title was “program director.” The hiring of Rodgers therefore gives SMS T2 its fourth head coach since the Beijing Olympics.
Rodgers’s official title is both Head Coach and Program Director, per the press release.
Stuber’s departure was first announced in a mid-March SMS newsletter. “Last week Maria organized a team zoom call and informed the team that she planned to step away from coaching at the end of the season in order to enjoy more family time,” Sverre Caldwell wrote to supporters on March 18.
“We will all miss her and that wonderful smile, but we respect her decision,” Caldwell wrote. “We thank her and hope that our paths continue to cross often! Everyone is looking forward to celebrating her time with us at Super Tour finals.”
A week later, SMS T2 athletes would dominate SuperTour Finals on skis, and team vibes, turned out by Stuber and her crew: Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Ben Ogden, and Rémi Drolet took a combined six podium spots between them in two individual races against deep fields. The quartet also teamed up to win the club relay by over a minute ahead of strong teams from the University of Utah and Alberta World Cup Academy.
“SuperTour finals was a really incredible week and one I will always remember,” Stuber wrote to Nordic Insights of her swan song with SMS. “Our team was dialed, supporting one another fully, maximizing engagement with the US community and skiing on another level from any other team of our caliber. It felt good. We have come a long way as a program over the past two years. I am confident that I’m leaving SMST2 with the right folks and process in place to continue doing great things. I will miss these young people.”
“New pro team based out of Northern Vermont, Mansfield Pro Nordic. We’re live, and it’s gonna be exciting.” —Perry Thomas
Three days earlier and 120 miles to the north, March 31 had seen a press release and website launch for Mansfield Pro Nordic, which becomes the country’s seventh professional skiing club at this time. (The other six, in alphabetical order: APU Nordic Ski Center, BSF Pro Team, Craftsbury Green Racing Project, SMS T2, Sun Valley Gold Team, and Team Birkie.)
“Led by Head Coach Perry Thomas,” the press release for Mansfield Pro reads, “this is a full-time, year-round professional ski team with a focus on national and international achievement and growth. Skiers interested in joining Mansfield Pro Nordic are committed to both furthering their personal goals, and contributing to a team that empowers everyone involved. …
“Athletes on the Mansfield Pro Nordic team receive financial assistance with housing and travel costs, contribute locally with involvement in youth and community recreation programs and team fundraisers, and serve as ambassadors for the sport and the region locally, nationally, and globally.”
More briefly put, as the team’s website states, “The mission of Mansfield Pro Nordic is to pursue Nordic skiing at the highest level, and share our passion with communities at every level.” The page is headlined, “From Vermont, to the World…”
This mission statement is not dissimilar from that of SMS T2, Thomas’s former employer.
“Our mission is international success, local inspiration,” SMS writes. “In addition to our training, we spend a great deal of time reaching out into our local areas to grow our sport and promote healthy lifestyles and communities.”
I am not trying to create a feud here where one does not exist; indeed, a mission statement focusing on both high-level performance and local connections is something that both programs share in common with all of APU, BSF, and Sun Valley, and likely other clubs as well.
But it has to be said that the former SMS head coach left SMS, then, less than six months later, helped found a new ski team that is, at least on paper, somewhat of a competitor. While asking, “With a healthy team culture, can we change the way skiers engage with the sport at the professional level?” And writing in the athlete application for the new team, “We don’t just aim to do things differently than current pro teams. We aim to do things better.”
I asked Thomas about this dynamic and any potential conflict here, probably fairly bluntly. Here are Thomas’s thoughts, quoted in full:
“I can’t/won’t speak on other programs.
“For me, this project has been one that’s consisted of taking a look at what examples we have out there, and asking ourselves: ‘Can we do this differently? Can we do this better?’ Quantifying something as better or worse than something else is maybe for future reflection and not meant as a competition, but I think we can for sure do some things differently.
“And furthermore, I believe the more the merrier — let’s create more pathways and opportunities to pursue skiing at a high level, and find more ways to grow the sport. Across the board, there isn’t a ton of differentiation when it comes to training — for the most part we’re all doing relatively the same stuff with some minor differences in execution or philosophies. I think there are differences in terms of location however, and with that I believe the Burlington area has a lot to offer outside of training. And that goes for the athletes’ lives and what they do in between and after workouts, but also for what the team and organization can do in creating relationships and having a positive presence in the community.
“I think there’s lots of unique and creative ways that we can engage with the ski community as well as the non-ski community, and that’s something I’m super excited about. It’s important to have a strong impetus for quality training, and performing at our best. But I think many of the important things that make us human often get forgotten about in that pursuit. Yes, we want top 10’s, top 5’s, podiums, wins, focused and specific interval workouts, etc. But we also want to be good stewards of the sport, and we want to give back, and we want to have lives outside of ski training and racing, and we want to continue to love and support the sport when we’re done racing — and I think we can do all of that really well here in Northern Vermont.
“Furthermore, I don’t want this to necessarily be an exclusive thing. I want this project to have a broad reach in terms of who we’re engaging and who we’re partnering with. Yes, northern Vermont/Burlington area/Chittenden County/[Mansfield Nordic Club] are our immediate affiliates, but why limit ourselves there? Why not try to extend our reach across the state, across New England, and across the country? We’re all in this sport together as one nation — let’s work together to continue to share knowledge and experiences so we can all get better together, and hopefully continue to grow this sport in the US.
“My one example in this regard, that I’m not ashamed to share, is several years ago, when I first started coaching, I had days where we would come up with a ‘winning’ wax combo. We’d all go out on course, watch the race, cheer, and people would ask: ‘What did you use for wax?!’ I remember several times in which I would lie to someone, saying it was some similar wax that we used or tested, but I wouldn’t tell them the exact wax/combo.
“Later, I realized how stupid that is! Who cares?! There’s no way I was the first person to think of mixing one brand’s universal klister with another brand’s red klister! The funny thing is that on any given day I might like one wax, the next person thinks it’s mediocre, and the next person thinks it’s garbage. That happens all the time.
“Ultimately, I came to the realization that hiding the secret wax combo from others doesn’t help anyone. Let’s share our knowledge and experiences so that we can all learn and get better together. And at the end of the day, I can say our athletes raced on K22 + Rossa [i.e., Swix Uni Klister plus Rode Rossa], and it was awesome, but you still need to test it and confirm.
“Regardless, my thinking about this has evolved, and I want to share what I’ve learned and what I’m currently learning so that we can all become very competent waxers and coaches and stewards of the sport. That is how we’re going to get better as a nation and get more kids on skis. I know many in the ski world are trying to figure out how we can close the gap in classic skiing between us and the Scandinavians, but how many people are also asking how we can become better classic waxers or better at teaching classic technique??
“And that’s one thing outside of supporting high level training and racing that I want to see more of — for me, that transition from being an assistant coach at college programs, to then head coach was not easy. I had eight years of coaching experience at that point, but absolutely needed more education and experience to competently coach one of the best pro teams in the country.
“In that setting, I learned by trial and error. Some things I tried worked out well, while others were bad, and I was humbled. I do truly believe in learning by getting thrown right into the fire, but that method doesn’t always work for everyone. I’d like to provide more opportunities for young coaches to gain experience and learn, so that they feel more prepared than I was to take on head coach roles. I want to host intermittent talks, conversations, learning opportunities where coaches can get together and discuss topics that we’re interested in learning more about, or ask questions we’re curious about.
“And let’s extend that to the athletes too — let’s all learn more about training, coaching, waxing so we can continue to progress and evolve. As cross-country ski coaches we are educators after all. We don’t just write training plans and wax skis, we are here to help these athletes learn and be better skiers and humans.
“This team is built on love, passion, collaboration, and community; and I encourage anyone interested in what I’m saying here to reach out! Let’s talk about it and share ideas, or prove each other wrong and keep getting better!”
Athletes interested in Mansfield Pro Nordic can find the new team’s site here, and the application page here. The athlete application deadline is April 15. There is also a Mansfield Pro college summer training group, starting up on June 1. The application for that group is here; same deadline.
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