Superheroes!

I spent yesterday writing a letter that can be sent to alumni, family and friends but I also had simply wanted to tell a story about the evolution of our superhero team! I was only able to include stories of some of our superhero athletes but please know that you are all superheroes to me!

It was a crisp day in October of 1998; the leaves on the cottonwoods were just beginning to turn a golden yellow color and against the brown backdrop of the northern prairie, it was a day on which everyone knew why the University of Wyoming’s school colors were brown and gold. My sister Becca was attending a UW Club Day and in her long sleeve Nordic ski T-shirt, she was recognized by fellow Freshman, Dennis. He could not help but recognize her shirt and enthusiastically told her that they were trying to start a Nordic Ski Club. Becca returned his interest and said, “…and I have volunteer coaches for you.” Thus, for Christi and I, an adventure that is entering its seventeenth year began.

The 1998-1999 season came with all the logistics of establishing a new program. We were able to field a team of four women and two men. Christi and I, first year graduate students, would often rise at 4 am. I would drive to the lab, start cultures, set up that days experiment so that I could be done by 3:30 pm to change into my coaching paraphernalia. Scholar by day, coach by night; slowly, it became who we were.

Two seasons passed, the team began to grow and Christi finished her Masters degree in Instructional Design. It was at USCSA Nationals in 2001 that I found myself standing in a puddle of melting snow on the Bogus Basin ski trails. It was over 50ºF and the women had just headed out on their second of two laps to complete their 15 kilometer freestyle race. Two of our women were in the top pack and likely to earn top ten finishes but much can happen in a second lap. My heart had the familiar flutter of nerves and I shook out my legs in feeble attempt to counter the epinephrine surges. But as the women rounded the turn before the last uphill, my heart leapt into my throat as I saw that our top woman, Erica (#1), was easily in the lead. In a screech that I am fairly sure shook Northern Flying Squirrels from their perches, I said, “You Rock My World!!”. Cold, clammy and still screaming, I hardly registered that Holly Brooks had passed by me in second place. This lack of vision was due to the fact our second woman had rounded the bend and was headed up the last uphill hot on Holly’s heels. I needn’t say much more than the fact that, “When Angels Deserve to Die” was Brooke’s theme song to relate the intensity in her stride and in her eyes.

That day, in 2001, was the first day that our women, having finished 1, 2 and 9 stepped to the top rung of the podium. It was also the spring before the summer that I defended my Masters degree in Biochemistry. Christi and I bought our first house, our first new car and Xena (our cat), fresh from the Alleys of Leadville, decided I was her person. Like the multiple nodes of a polyphasic dichotomous key, all of the facets our life were intertwining to form the root from which we could build, in our every volunteer hour, the most unique ski program in the Nation. And what of the day job? As a summer instructor for the Upward Bound Program, I had fallen in love with classroom and like water, forceful and certain of its path I tried to fill every possible hour of my day with teaching. From the General Chemistry lecture hall to the Medical Microbiology Lab and eventually to the virtual spaces of fully online biochemistry, I focused on facilitating student learning. Christi became the technology guru for the College of Education and spent her everyday cultivating expertise in usable educational technologies. These were, of course, always tried first on the ski team officers and athletes.

Each year, we welcomed more athletes who had joined teams in the East or Midwest and had difficult experiences that brought them to UW. Injured and sad, the love of skiing lost, healing became a way on our team. Christi and I were pushed everyday to further our own education, to be better able to answer our athletes’ questions, to more effectively facilitate their learning, healing and growth.

It was a hot day during a fall overdistance run in 2003. We were happily bounding along the dirt roads of pilot hill when I found myself surrounded by the women’s team and Erika (#2) overflowed with questions. She wanted to better understand the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates and I found that my knowledge was insufficient. I knew the chemistry but less of the application. This, coupled with having unexpectedly being awarded a very late NCAA post-graduate scholarship sent me back to school for what I now think of as the Renaissance in my own education. Classes in Exercise Physiology and Anatomy morphed into Sociology and finally Adult Education. I unearthed, watered and was fortunate to have the compost of so many educators with sexy minds to nurture new interests. Perhaps the epitome of those minds was Christi, whom in 2006 completed her PhD in Instructional Technology and Adult Education. Together, we discovered and intellectually nurtured a passion for social and environmental justice in education and coaching. Into our coaching we brought philosophies of humanism, feminism and Paulo Freire’s Social-Emancipatory philosophy. We began integrating Friday coaching lectures on topics ranging from the metabolism and biochemistry of alcohol consumption to the impacts of low intensity training on immune function. Our coaching became integrated and holistic.

Professors by day and coaches by night? Perhaps. But each day the lines began to blur more and with this integration came simultaneous success on the ski trails. On the wall of the College of Agriculture hangs a picture of me. Below the picture, teaching awards are listed but no-one’s eye is likely to linger on these for I am sporting a super trendy 1985 femme mullet. Forever held in time, this picture, taken in 2006 was a tribute to the first overall USCSA UW Men’s team Victory. The women having taken this honor two times prior, the men had a goal and a bet. Riley and Joe, now seniors had won that bet and after the relay, I had sat in our Maine Vacation Rental, Riley on one side, Joe on the other as they cut my then long hair. Perhaps this hair loss was a catalyst, for since 2006, both the men and women have repeated their victories three more times.

It would be a lie for either Christi or me to say that we did not feel the thrill of each one of those victories. In fact, each day as I walk down our stairs I am surrounded by picture after picture telling the story of sixteen years of coaching. Each day I stop to stare at a different year and I relive the emotions of that time. However, our greatest pride stems from the fact that our athletes are more than just athletes. In order fund our race seasons, the athletes do year-round volunteer work. Working concession stands and selling T-shirts in the late nineties morphed into football parking and art auctions by 2005. However, as our coaching became more holistic, our athletes’ fundraising became more meaningful. We began volunteering to rake lawns at no charge; donations were welcome. We started painting houses and doing manual labor. The athletes would rake one lawn for a donation and the lawn of the elderly neighbor for which they would receive no monetary compensation. But, the payoff could not be measured, for our team became a pivotal part of the Laramie community. Faculty began calling us when they had been injured. Our athletes would go to their house, chop wood and mow the lawn. Simultaneously, some of the athletes began to join Christi on the Shepard Symposium Committee. As a team, we began presenting at the Symposium on Social Justice. By late spring of 2009, our team was becoming green as quickly as was the prairie. This growth fed not only the quality of the undergraduate experience but also the postgraduate opportunities. After finishing her degree in Chemical Engineering, a four-year academic All-American and team President, Melissa interviewed for jobs and found that they were forthcoming whenever she mentioned the ski team activities that had formed her leadership. Both Ava and Fitz found that navigating the intricacies of Law School was easier having lived through the sometimes-stressful dynamics of team leadership. Becca, now head of the High Plains USSA Region began her ski leadership as team president. Adam’s (#1) interviewers had trouble wrapping their minds around an undergraduate club that could raise more than $50,000 in a single season. And yet, the socially situated, community-based and environmentally advocating nature of our fundraising had only just begun.

The clock ticks over to 8 am and Ben comes bounding into my office. A Chemical Engineering major and currently one of the students taking my online Biochemistry class, Ben begins to bubble about his research attempting to encase living cells in polyethylene glycol beads. His beads, currently surrounded by surfactant are being difficult to purify and we immerse ourselves in a long conversation about the biochemical principles that might enable him to achieve a purer prep. Stoked with our conclusion, Ben literally bounds out of his chair. Every time I see this bound I am elated for Ben came to us very broken, overtrained and mentally and physically drained. I almost chuckle with this thought for it would be very difficult to convince anyone that Ben had been broken. He leaps out of the office and leaps right back; he seems the very icon of our current team slogan: 365 Stoked!

He says, “By the way, is Kyle here?”.

Kyle, now my advisee for three years and our athlete for more than four - the 2013 Overall USCSA Champion - works in our lab down the hall. His current project focuses on phytoremediation of uranium mine tailings on the reservation near Riverton. Also, currently my Biochemistry teaching assistant, Kyle works forty hours a week, trains 12-20 hours a week and – as outgoing team President - does volunteer work in the surrounding spare moments. I relate that I think he was there and we walk down together to chat. Kyle immediately apologizes for not getting as much biochem grading done as he should have because he was writing a summary of impacts on immune function due to high sugar diets for the ski team blog. Ben bubbles to Kyle about his polymers and asks him if he wants to look at them on the dark field microscope. Ben has already removed the scope and is preparing before Kyle can even say yes. I leave the two who are now engaged in conversation so that I can get back to work. However, as I steal just one more proud glance, for just a moment I believe I see a flash of the colors of Captain America and as Kyle bumbles out from behind his homemade uranium barrier, dropping his awkward paper planner, I am reminded of Clark Kent.

Upon returning to my office, I hear my computer bing. An email from our incoming team President and defending USCSA National Overall Champion, Sierra, announces yet another Trash-2-Treasures pickup. Now our largest fundraiser, this environmental justice project is unique to a Western University and was Sierra’s Brain Child. Like nearly a dozen of our athletes with Environment and Natural Resources Concurrent degrees, Sierra loves the Earth with the strongest type of Agape that I have ever observed. On this day in late July, the team has packed full more than five storage units with furniture and other household items that would have been sent to the landfill. They will clean and re-sell these items locally at prices that even the most resource-limited incoming graduate student can afford.

“Bing”, a second email pops into my inbox. Another email from Sierra asks if I might possibly have any suggestions for characterizing the mychorizzal fungi on which the Yellowstone black squirrels feed. She must be in between her Physics II class and her GCMS runs in the Chem lab. I wonder how she even had time to find a phone booth.

I settle down to answer he email but my eyes are distracted. They settle on the pictures on my door that tell the story of these many years of teaching and coaching. I see Pat, in one picture he is in his brown and gold lycra skiing to a top three finish at Nationals, in another, he is in suite and tie as last year’s Outstanding Graduating Senior for the University of Wyoming! Next to him is Elise; her face is on a Laramie Boomerang article where she is writing about food justice. One might glimpse a view of this superhero through the trees that surround ACRES Student Farm. In her ‘close to the earth’ gardening clothes one might have no idea that last year on the trails of the Enchanted Forest, New Mexico, she skied to the best NCAA Division I finish that one of our athletes has ever had. In fact, she earned USSA points that would nearly enable her to start a World Cup.

Perhaps Christi and I are the luckiest coaches in the World. For last year we were honored to travel with these ‘superhero athletes’ to Trentino, Italy where we raced in the World University Games. With generous support from the University and the Laramie community, our fundraising efforts topped $100,000. This year we have been invited to represent the United States again at the Games in Slovakia. While all of us look forward to this opportunity, I believe that the thing to which we look most forward is the process that will enable us to get there and to be ready to compete. We will run, ski and bike over many mountains together and while we are doing so our ‘sexy minds’ will take us to conversations ranging from the role of mast cells in allergic response, the cofactors of PEP Carboxykinase to the many ways in which we might liberate people and the environment through sport. It is only with your help that Christi and I can continue to nurture this fully holistic, integrated program. Alumni, we miss and love you! Friends and previous supporters, we thank you for your unending assistance.