Burke Mountain Academy’s Nordic Team is gearing up for the new season’s first camp. Again the setting is in the Adirondack Mountains basing out of the the Trail’s End Inn’s “Cascade Cottage” and coach Pete Phillip’s home in Keene, New York. We have four new Burkies to welcome this year and the mix of work, training and enjoying the summer is a perfect way to start. Jenna Hill is the daughter of Alum Bruce Hill and joins us as a Sophomore. She made the decision to switch to Nordic from Alpine before entering Burke and we are excited to have her. Holly Bushman comes to Burke from Union 32, the same school Liz Stephen attended before BMA. She will be a junior and has participated in last year’s Christmas Camp and other Burke mini camps. Holly is a runner, and has a strong Nordic background. A veteran of several Burke camps and last year’s Sweden trip, Patrick Joslin comes to Burke as a PG. Pat is already “IN” at Williams, and wants to take a year to concentrate on training, math and writing. He knows the whole gang and it will be fun to have him aboard. Jordan Buetow is really making a big jump in joining BMA’s Nordic Team. Jordan hails from Fairbanks, Alaska and will do a PG year with us. He is looking seriously at several Eastern schools, and wants to get into the Eastern Cup mix while working on a solid training base. His last season was derailed a bit by a chronic tonsillitis but after coughing those up, it sounds as though he is ready to roll.
The camp will consist of a series of assessment workouts and physical testing that will give the coaches and the individual athletes some training guidelines for the rest of the summer and fall. Among other things will be a 3000 meter run, max rep tests in dips, straight leg lift, and “the Brutal Bench”. When school opens the Nordics will take the testing day on the 23rd to do the “Timed Hike” with poles. That will set individual bench marks for another one at on Parents’ Weekend.
The A-dack camps always mean a little water time, and some sort of adventure day...roller ski up this, run over and around that, swim the river, run the river.
When the Fall Training Block comes in late September BMA Nordic will head for the Smoky, Pioneer, Boulder, White Cloud, and Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. There will be a week break after Parents’ Weekend and then from the 28th of September to the 17th of October we will stay in Ketchum and train with the Sun Valley Nordic Ski Team taking advantage of moderate altitude, lots of peaks to bag, and miles of paved bike path. The details are still coming together, but it should be another way to get mighty, and share the passion of the sport with kids from another part of the country.
