The Team That Spells "Colman" Together Stays Together

Here's Sanville:

Many outsiders to the Nordic Ski Team world wonder how we can call ourselves a team sport in the same way that football and soccer call themselves team sports. Despite what many endurance athletes contend, this is in fact a legitimate question, and the simple answer is that we’re not. In skiing there is no ball to pass, no assist to be had. For the most part we don’t even do relays. Though skiing with a teammate in a race is a nice morale boost, it isn’t intrinsically part of the sport, and even though our times and places are pooled to create a team score, success or failure is the aggregate of individual efforts, not the result of a team effort within the race.

However, to say that skiing isn’t a team sport is to tragically misunderstand it, and a much more complicated answer exists. I offer last Saturday as proof. Last Saturday the Bowdoin Cross Country team had a meet at Pineland Farms, an area not too far from Brunswick that the team skis at regularly during the winter. Three of our teammates, Scott Longwell, Colman Hatton, and Yasmine White, are crazy enough to actually do Cross Country as well as skiing at Bowdoin. So, the ski team woke up at balls-o’clock in the morning on Saturday (ok, it wasn’t that early, but anything before noon on Saturday is balls-o’clock in the morning), inhaled a lightning fast breakfast, and then piled into cars, making our way to Pineland. During ski practice on Friday we had cooked up a plan, and upon arriving we swiftly put it into motion. Niko, our brave and fearless leader, whipped out his purple Crayola magic marker, which turned out to be not so washable, and the guys whipped off their shirts. Letter by letter, Niko emblazoned COLMAN across our chests, which fortunately is somewhat of an anagram for Scott, so with a little more magic purple ink on our backs, we were all set (sorry Yasmine, there just wasn’t enough skin to make it work). Then we ran out and looked for the nastiest, gnarliest, longest, most vertical hill we could find and waited.

The pounding of feet altered us to their approach, and sure enough, there was Colman at the front of the pack, face set, grim in cross country concentration. “Go Colman!” we screamed, “Hiyah, Hiyah, Hiyah!” For a second his focus broke and we were gifted with the happiest, most rewarding grin I’ve ever seen, and then, he was gone. We quickly tried to arrange ourselves for Scott, which we unfortunately didn’t think through very well, having the back letters in a different order. Not a moment too soon, Scott cruised by us as we shouted ourselves hoarse at him. Unlike Colman though, he suffered no such moment of weakness. As we sprinted back to try and catch the finish, I heard one of our fellow spectators tell her husband, “Now that’s what it’s all about.”

And she was right. That is what being on a ski team is all about. It’s about having a group of people around you that do what you do, love what you love, and truly understand like no one else can, the work, pain, and sweat that you’ve put into this sport. It’s about how much more wonderful practicing together is than practicing alone, about someone being there to celebrate with when you’ve had a good race and commiserate with when you’ve had a bad one. We may have no ball to pass, but I guarantee that come race day, each and every one of us would perform significantly worse if we had trained alone all season. It’s about pushing each other to the very limits of your endurance. And perhaps most importantly, it’s about waking up at balls-o’clock in the morning, covering ourselves with purple magic marker (which despite vigorous scrubbing, still hasn’t come off), and screaming “hiyah, hiyah, hiyah” until our voices give out. Without a doubt, Nordic skiing is a team sport, and for me it is one of the greatest aspects of the sport, both on and off the snow.