Editors note: This is the last Coaches Around the Country feature for the winter. We hope you've enjoyed them!
Ben Arians is a coach for Alaska Winter Stars in Anchorage Alaska. He's been involved with Team Alaska JO Team for 7 years and has been coaching for 10 years. He also is the manager at Alaska Mountaineering and Hiking (AMH), a popular store in Anchorage.
. Back then, many of the top juniors were also top xc runners, which has changed now. That’s been something that’s changed, for sure. Very few top skiers these days run xc, and vice versa. I suppose it’s become that way in most sports, you have to get specific, or you’re not competitive. I raced high school at Robert Service High School, and then went to Western State College in Gunnison, CO (go Mountaineers!) where I raced for 4 years with Miles Minson as my coach. I had a great time at Western, and I highly recommend it as a school and a very cool place to spend your college years. A cool story: for my senior year, 5 of the 10 varsity team members on the Nordic squad were all Service High School graduates, one of whom, Amy Crawford, later went on to win NCAAs. I came back up to Alaska after college, and stayed away from the racing scene for a few years, as I was a little tired of it, and then gradually got back into racing at the local level, and then jumped with both feet into coaching when I became the head coach at West Anchorage High School (go Eagles!) and also began working with AWS. </p>
<p><I>You work with Jan Buron and the Alaska Winter Stars program in Anchorage Alaska, which is a wildly popular and successful program. From the outside, it appears like you and Jan balance each other out and complement each other well. What's it like working with Jan and how's the experience been this whole time?</I></p>
<p>Yeah, we do seem to balance each other out pretty well. It seems like when I get panicky and excited, he’s calm, and when he gets excited, I am more calm (usually). Sometimes we’re both a mess! It’s great working with Jan, because he’s very practical and logical about what it takes to get stronger and faster, very no-nonsense and straight-forward in his approach, but he’s also got a great sense of humor and fun which the kids really respond to. There’s no BS about him, which sometimes doesn’t endear him to everyone, but you always know where he stands on something. Jan loves to argue, and usually he’s pretty right on. We have totally different backgrounds regarding skiing, he’s a graduate of the Polish sport school system and has a degree in ski coaching, whereas I’m a product of the Alaska high school and Junior Nordic training program, so I can help give some perspective on the history and culture of junior racing in the region. However, we are 95% on the same page regarding coaching and training philosophy. Interestingly enough, with Jan also being the head coach of the Service High School ski team, my alma mater, and myself having coached for other high schools, but never at Service, we also compete against each other as coaches pretty regularly. We hardly ever worked together for waxing, somehow that seemed unethical. I think we both figure the other is capable enough to handle the waxing, and when one of us gets the better of the other, then that’s incentive to do better next time. Sometimes I actually manage to out-wax him (rarely, it’s true), and it’s a good feeling, I tell you! With Winter Stars, we’ve been very lucky with the quality of our kids, but Jan also knows how to get the most out of the athletes. It’s a very strong, healthy program, with great parental support, and it’s been truly a wonderful experience. I am proud to be a part of it. </p>
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