Nordic Ski Team (Student Organization)

Raise your glass!

This is a toast to our alumni, our family whose everyday work makes ripples that touch lives around the world.

Here in Laramie, in Mrs. Krisanna Andrews’s 1st grade classroom, students build skills of noticing and wondering in science. They write stories and consider how books have changed lives around the world. Only blocks away, Ella DeWolf works to create an app that maps out areas in the Gulf of Suez region of Egypt that are suitable for solar and wind energy development projects while considering impacts to migratory bird species and cultural sites. She ponders the work needed to translate the app into Arabic. Sipping an espresso at Sunshine Coffee before sunrise, Dr. Ben Noren writes a grant proposal and emails investors to support his Biotech companies, Cell Drop and Juniper.

At Laramie High School, Ms. Becca Watson facilitates her 3-D art students in building life-sized cardboard statues. Simultaneously, she prepares for her twenty-fourth year of coaching the High School ski team. In Casper, Coach Justin Kinner prepares his athletes at Natrona County High School to compete against Becca’s Plainsmen. Natrona and Laramie are two of seven ski teams statewide, all of which have been or are still coached by one of our alums.

In the Northern reaches of the state, Dr. Sierra Jech meets with collaborators in the Tetons to plan the installation of the newest of hundreds of worldwide CrustNet sites. Here, she will work with scientists and students from both UW—including current skiers—and Northwest College to monitor the fragile biocrust ecosystem. Just south of Sierra’s biocrust site, Attorney Trevor Willoughby prosecutes misdemeanor and felony cases for Teton County. He is also the lead attorney in the Teton County and Prosecuting Attorney’s office on Involuntary Hospitalizations. In these roles he balances the complex and often competing interests of the community, law enforcement, victims, defendants, and the judiciary.

In the neighboring state of Utah, Leann Bentely serves as the Communications Manager and Press Officer for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team. She guides the fastest skiers in our nation as they navigate media coverage and press relationships. Never too busy to reconnect, Leann shares her stories about skiers like Jessie Diggins with our current UW skiers and even incoming high school athletes.

In Oregon, Sam Wiswell works as a Forest Service Recreation and Trails Planner. He’s found his niche in disaster recovery work doing trail system assessments, repair and recovery contracting, and redesign. He works throughout the nation doing hurricane and flood recovery and all over the West on a post-fire recovery teams.

On the other side of the globe, in Shanghai, Professor Dongyang Han works sun-up to rundown at Shanghai University of Sport to educate interdisciplinary scholars. His students not only gain prowess in rollerskiing but they also develop holistic teaching philosophies.

From Wyoming, across the nation, and throughout the world, alumni of UW Nordic are promoting the health and wellness of the earth and her people. A network of synergistic connections, a blanket of love, a fiery inferno of passionate advocacy, our alumni network is an unstoppable force of inspiration. They provide a quilt of support to our current athletes who dream each day of becoming people of whom our alumni will be proud.

I dream, one day, of making this alumni network visible to all! Here I have shared only a few small stories but one day I will write your book. The book that tells the tails of each of the hundreds of you. I want Wyoming, the nation, and the world to know that UW Nordic is a cradle of world changing greatness. But for now, Christi and I simply want to continue rocking this cradle.

Yesterday, before I started yoga, I looked out at each of the faces of our 25 current skiers. I had had to miss practice the day before, and I told the group that no matter the number of years—for Christi and I, this is year 29—I am always sad when I have to miss a day. I said, “29 years just isn’t enough.” So, we forge into nearly three decades of nurturing fundraising. The athletes valet park cars at events, drive golf carts at football games, rake leaves, run a gear swap—the list goes on. Yet, at the end of the longest fundraising days, we close our eyes knowing that it is only through the support of our alumni and friends that we will make it to year thirty. So, we raise our glass, once again and make a toast to all of you! Thank you for helping us to rock this cradle for one more year.

*This Student Organization receives a de minimus level of base support from the university as noted in full in the About section of the Tier 2 Student Organization campaign tile.