Have you ever heard of Nordic skiing? Did you know it was a varsity sport at Harvard? No? Well, until recently, neither did I. With 10 people on the team—six women and four men—the Nordic ski team is one of the smallest sports teams at Harvard. Many of these members feel as if their sport, also known as cross-country skiing, goes largely unnoticed at the College. Nordic skiing is time-consuming and difficult to break into; not many high schools and elementary schools have Nordic ski teams, and there aren’t many places where one can practice regularly. So how did these team members find out about this sport?
“I’m from Anchorage, Alaska,” Elias Soulé ’28 explained. “[Nordic skiing] is kind of what everyone does when they’re growing up. My parents had me in Junior Nordic, which is the Junior Nordic skiing program that everyone does in town. I started that when I was five. I was honestly just skiing around with my parents before that, so maybe three years old is when I started skiing,” said Soulé.
The Anchorage to Harvard Nordic ski pipeline didn’t just start with Soulé; the captain of the women’s team, Quincy Donley ’25, is from the same hometown. “I actually started Nordic skiing before I started walking. Both my parents skied, so they put me on skis at a very young age—I think [at the age of] one and a half or two,” said Donley.
Nordic skiing is not without rigorous training. Not only are the hours intense during the winter, but team members explained how their time-intensive training regimen starts in the summer. “The summer is when we train the most, and truthfully, it’s like a part-time job in the summer because it ranges anywhere from 20-30 hours of just pure training time. I think that makes it really difficult to have a job or get an internship or do other things you’re excited about,” said Bennett Hutchinson ’28.
Donley echoed this sentiment, explaining the rigor of the training in the fall. “We have practice every Saturday and Sunday morning. We hop in our team van and drive somewhere to go roller, ski, or run. Then during the school week, we have practice in the morning, usually at seven, and then we’ll do an afternoon session, usually starting at around 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.,” said Donley.
Soulé also noted the long hours during off-season training, saying, “Last week, we did 16 hours of training time total.” In comparison, the Harvard alpine ski team, also in their off-season, currently practices five hours a week. The Harvard men’s soccer team, currently in season, trains 15-18 hours a week. “Honestly, doing Nordic skiing is a similar [commitment] to taking Math 55,” said Soulé. The athletes on this team have had to excel at balancing their training with the rigorous workload at Harvard.
Donley explained another difficulty that comes with this sport at Harvard: location. “We can’t exactly just walk out our back door onto ski trails or more traditional ski trails, so we do have to improvise a little bit. We ski at a golf course nearby called Weston Ski Track; they make man-made snow there in the winter,” said Donley.
The competitive aspect of the Nordic ski team provides a sense of community and belonging for the team members. “My favorite part of Nordic skiing is honestly the competition. Once you reach a certain level, you kind of know everyone in the sport. And then you travel around, and you race the same people, you get to know everyone—it becomes a very tight-knit community. The races are brutal, but after, they’re a lot of fun. And it’s a sense of accomplishment that comes with doing one of the hardest endurance sports in the world,” said Soulé.
When asked about her favorite part of being on the team, Donley explained how she loved traveling to races. “Pretty much every weekend, starting after Christmas break, we are traveling to carnival races. So that’s our collegiate circuit, and it’s super fun to stay with the team during the weekends and race against other colleges, and to have a little vacation every weekend, but also get to ski race and work hard together,” said Donley.
The Harvard Nordic ski team is one of the most impressive teams on campus, yet not enough people know about them. Our school spirit shouldn’t just appear once a year at the Harvard-Yale football game. As a college, we should support all of our amazing undergraduate sports teams and the talented athletes that comprise them. So, put on your beanies, puffer coats, and scarves, and come support the Nordic team at the Dartmouth Carnival at Oak Hill on Feb. 7 and 8!
Pippa Lee ’28 (pippalee@college.harvard.edu) writes Sports for the Independent.