Rick Kapala of SVSEF

1982 – First coaching job as assistant at Michigan Tech
1983-84 – Head Coach Pacific Lutheran Univ, Tacoma WA. Saw John Callahan do his first ever nordic race on a pair of Fischer crowns in McCall
1985-87 – Head Coach West Anchorage High School. Got lucky and walked into a squad with Nina Kemppel, D'anna Dorris, Joey Caterinichio, Tony Slatonbarker, Stace Moon – all really good or going to be really good skiers right off the bat. Ja Dorris was my assistant coach. Chris Grover was a skinny little J2 with the West High team. Can you believe how much he's muscled up!

On my first trip to Europe coaching Polar Cup 1987 with Torbjorn Karlsen, I saw some kid from Minnesota named John Bauer totally handin’ it to the European Juniors (that was cool!)

1988-Present Head Coach SVSEF
I’ve also been fortunate to be a part of three World Junior staffs (twice as team leader), one World Champs, and a couple of wild Western Canada Spring Series trips.

4. What are your ultimate goals with coaching?

Just like we encourage our skiers to develop a comprehensive set of goals, I have lots of goals in skiing that involve the work I do in the different arenas in skiing, not just coaching per say.

Year in and year out, we strive at SVSEF to have the best youth sports program in our community and the best overall Junior and Senior club team in the US. By best we mean, lots of athletes who keep skiing for their whole lives and getting more than our share of top competitive results. It's my job to make sure our town has the very best xc ski race program we can have.

I think it is really important and a big goal for me to help make US xc skiing a bigger and better sport in the Intermountain region and in the US. So, to that end I have goals that I work on as a member of Intermountain and the US Cross Country Sport Committee. I want to see us have the best development pipeline in the world. I want us as a nation to have a system where we always have 10-20 young women and 10-20 young men (ages 16-22) who are training and competing at levels equal to and beyond their European counterparts. We need a system of integrated camps for the best kids to be challenged by staff and to be challenged by each other and every coach in the US ought to feel like their best kids can aspire to being a part of. When we get this done, the Olympic Podiums and victories will come.

Finally, I want to get better as a coach. I've been at this for awhile now and at times its easy to get pulled in too many directions and on tasks that come with being a program director and these can impinge on my ability to improve as a coach. For sure, I want to run the kind of program where our most talented and dedicated Sun Valley skiers can be supported fully in their efforts to be the absolute best in the US and the world. We've had lots of kids make World Juniors over years, we've had kids win at Junior Nationals, and recently had success at seniors but its not enough when we think about the very top of the podium at the international level. Big engines come along through our little town only rarely, but it would be incredible to see one of our very own Sun Valley skiers on top of the podium at the World Stage.

5. Can you describe how SVSEF all works/runs with your assistant coaches?

Abi Holt and I both work/coach full time, year-round with the SVSEF. I am primarily coaching and organizing our Sun Valley senior team while Abi Holt and I co-coach the Junior Team. Abi is also doing some senior coaching too, as she took them on the New Zealand trip this past August. At the junior level, we also have Chris Mallory (former UNH racer) and Ashley McQueen (former U of Utah racer) as assistants. Abi is also our assistant program director so she and I share the administrative duties for the senior and junior teams as well as overseeing the operations of our J3 and younger program and coaches. We have 14 paid part time coaches who coach the 120+ kids in our J3 and younger teams so we have to pay attention their efforts and we try to do lots of in house coaches education and support those programs.

We also spend a fair amount of time on budgets and fundraising but we are really well supported by the larger efforts of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation staff. We have a great administration team at SVSEF who not only help our xc team but also our snowboard, alpine and freestyle teams. It's a great organization and I think the SVSEF is a great model for how a winter sports club can have success in all the disciplines. Its not an either/or thing between, for example, xc and alpine. We want to do well in all disciplines. I think we must have about 500+ kids in total in all our SV programs. Our team is also very fortunate to have our own xc ski team training center located on our own xc ski trail system. So we have the added job of operating these facilities.

6. What (if any) unique/different training methods do you incorporate with your athletes in Sun Valley?

We live in the mountains like a lot of Western and New England teams so we get the chance to have a lot of adventure in our training. We like to get the juniors into the wilds and climb peaks, go on long backpacking trips, and help them see ski racing as part of a big active lifestyle. This isn't anything different than what other folks do, but I think it's something that can separate xc skiing as a sport from say tennis or soccer. We try to take advantage of everything we can to make our sport unique in the eyes of our participants. There is no secret to our training. Lots of distance, lots of uphill intervals, and lots of strength training. It’s really easy and enjoyable to train a ton in Sun Valley because ‘nature’ is right out your doorstep and you don't have too worry about grizzlies or wackos with mullets driving muscle cars!

7. Favorite ski trails/race trails?

I’ll always have a soft spot for the Michigan Tech trails since that's where I got my start
in the sport.

8. Open mic' Rick……let ‘er rip!

WE (the USA!) have lots of xc skiers, but we need to figure out how to get the training and preparation levels higher. I know how hard the 16-20 year old skiers train at Norwegian and Swedish ski gymnasiums. We are not yet there as a nation. Some individuals are, but not enough……yet. Some of this has to do with our educational and societal differences, but that's an excuse we can't afford.

I'd also like to see our national governing body be able to develop the structure to facilitate more comprehensive coaches education. But there's only so much 4 guys can do, and the USST staff's first job is coaching.

Thanks to you guys for promoting the sport through the site. I'd much rather check out Faster Skier than sort out the klister box!

Thanks Rick!