Fifteen promising young cross-country skiers from across the country – though most hail from the Bow Valley and Calgary – were named to the Alberta World Cup Academy inaugural team, Sunday.
The newly formed program, based out of the Canmore Nordic Centre, is gauged toward high-performance skiers looking to train more intensely than their club, in the hopes of reaching the step.
“It’s a program that is basically designed to help athletes get to the next level,” Academy racing director Mike Cavaliere said. “Every athlete has a dream of going onto the national team or to represent Canada eventually at the Olympics.
“There’s always been, in particular in the west, a tiny gap between the national program and the clubs, and the clubs do a great job, but their mandate is so wide they had to service everyone from jack rabbits all the way up to masters racing and it’s very hard for them to resource a program that could cater to one specific group.”
The Alberta World Cup Society, Cavaliere explained, has been able to partially fund this development program, which is geared towards athletes just out of high school. The second criteria is a proven commitment to the sport, he added.
The Academy received 25 applications and was narrowed down to 15 skiers.
“When you’re doing a more elite program the coach-to-athlete ratio has to be a bit smaller,” Cavaliere said, adding that the ratio is one coach per 10 athletes, with a second coach coming on part time.
The 15-member team boasts six athletes from the Bow Valley, which includes Heidi Widmer, Kevin Sandau, Rhonda and Gord Jewett, Brooke Gorling and Jess Cockney, with the rest coming from Calgary, Edmonton, Salmon Arm, Thunder Bay and Ottawa.
Three athletes that have been named to the team are relocating, one from B.C. and two from Ontario.
“The Nordic Centre is the Montreal Forum (of cross-country skiing),” Cavaliere joked. “I don’t want to take anything away from anybody, but we’ve had an Olympics, we’ve had World Cups, and with that comes a lot of excitement.
“It’s a very unique opportunity to be able to come to the Bow corridor.”
Cavaliere is also the coach for the Foothills Nordic Ski Club, which some members of the Academy have been a part of, including Sandau.
“It sounds like a good program, and I’m definitely looking forward to what it can offer me this coming year,” Sandau said.
“It’s definitely a step up from the club program, which I was a part of last year, so it’s definitely the next step forward to becoming a World Cup athlete and hopefully Olympian.”
After just being named this weekend, the team headed to Vernon, B.C. for on-snow training at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Ski Club.
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