Women Ski Coaches Association

Women Ski Coaches Association Launches GearUP, Pairing Women Coaches with the Connections They Need to Outfit Their Programs

Ben TheyerlDecember 5, 2022

Formed in 2019, the Women’s Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) has been a consistent and ardent supporter of creating gender equality in all areas of North American skiing. With WSCA founders—St. Scholastica Head Coach Maria Stuber and Staffer, Craftsbury Green Racing Project Biathlete (and former St. Scholastica skier) Kelsey Dickinson at the organizational core—a strong actor-network has been formed to advocate for women in the ski coaching profession. This has included some notable partnerships with...

News

Women Ski Coaches Association Announces GearUP Program (Application Open Now)

FasterSkierOctober 6, 2022

The women Ski Coaches Association is excited to announce our new GearUP program. This program is designed to help reduce barriers for women ski coaches by partnering women coaches with an equipment brand rep to outfit them with gear, provide brand specific knowledge, and create industry connections. Madshus, Fischer, Rossignol and Salomon will each work directly with two women coaches for the duration of the 2022-23racing season.* The eight coaches selected for this program will...

Community Interviews News US Ski Team

Q&A with US Ski D-Team Coach Kristen Bourne: How her Journey in Coaching Inspired a New Fellowship

Ben TheyerlAugust 29, 2022

Earlier this month, the National Nordic Foundation (NNF), in partnership with the Women Ski Coach’s Association (WSCA) and the Olympic Women’s Cross-Country Book Project, announced the Trail to Gold Fellowship. The Fellowship aims to correct for a historical gender imbalance in U.S. coaching at the club, collegiate, and international level by providing fellows with funding to complete a two-week internship with the U.S. Ski Team on the World Cup this winter. The Trail to Gold Fellowship...

Community News World Cup

Trail to Gold Fellowship Wants to Put More Female Coaches on the World Cup

Ella HallAugust 3, 2022

While it’s difficult to get exact numbers, the general distribution of coaches and service staff on the World Cup level is largely male dominated. The recently announced Trail to Gold Fellowship aims to help change that. Following the publication of the Trail to Gold book in November of 2021, members of the book committee began discussing how to use the net proceeds generated by book sales. After bouncing around various proposals, they settled on the...

Community Interviews

Lizzie Larkins on Learning on the Job as a Wax Tech at World Juniors

Ella HallMarch 9, 2022

The role of a wax technician seems both secretive and extremely public. As spectators, we don’t see what happens on race day inside a wax truck or trailer. We aren’t privy to the tips and tricks that are employed to work magic on an athlete’s skis. Conversely, when the wax is off for a racer, that error is on full display for the public as we watch an athlete struggle through a race on skis...

Community Feature News

World Cup Development Opportunities: an Interview with Rising Coach and Tech, Kristen Bourne

Rachel PerkinsDecember 27, 2021

In November, FasterSkier interviewed Kristen Bourne, assistant coach at the College of St. Scholastica (CSS) in Duluth, MN, after she was selected as a Women’s Sports Foundation Van DerVeer Fellow, which came with a grant totalling $17,500. The objective of the fellowship is to improve representation of women in elite level coaching by supporting the development of rising coaches at the college level. The majority of the funds from the VanDerveer Fellowship went directly to...

Community Feature General News

CSS Assistant Coach Kristen Bourne Recognized with Women’s Sport Foundation VanDerveer Fellowship

Rachel PerkinsNovember 11, 2021

Kicking off her second year as assistant coach at the College of St. Scholastica (CSS) in Duluth, MN, Kristen Bourne was recently named one of ten recipients of the Women’s Sports Foundation VanDerveer Fellowship. The program, named for revered Stanford University Basketball coach, Tara VanDerveer, aims to increase representation of women in coaching at the collegiate level through the development of the rising generation. This is the first time that the award has been granted...

Multimedia Nordic Nation Podcasts

Nordic Nation: Caitlin Gregg — Athlete, Mother, and Team Birkie Head Coach

Rachel PerkinsSeptember 1, 2021

In early July, the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation announced the launch of the Team Birkie professional racing team. The elite post-graduate training group would pull from the three primary midwestern clubs, the Loppet Foundation, Central Cross Country Skiing (or CXC), and the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. While the midwest has a strong culture of cross country skiing with a breadth of strong youth and masters racing teams, it has been nearly a decade since the...

Community Feature

Lifelong Learners and Waxing Skis with the Women Ski Coaches Association

Jason AlbertNovember 4, 2020

The magic brew. The secret sauce. The omniscient wax-tech with encyclopedic knowledge of all things ski wax and the ability to bestow the goods onto a ski base. Ah, those slick and slippery skis. And that bite of kick in slush. The mythology of wax in this sport looms large. And the few wax-mixologists of note live among their peers as deities. The popular myth is this: some are gifted with the wax gene, most...

Community Resources Waxing

WSCA Announces Webinar: Waxing Skis and Waning the Gender Gap (Press Release)

FasterSkierOctober 6, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The WSCA Announces Webinar: Waxing Skis and Waning the Gender Gap Today, the Women Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) announced it will host a Webinar to connect and educate women coaches, and redefine ski waxing culture and opportunities. The webinar, Waxing Skis and Waning the Gender Gap will take place on October 21st. “The ski coaching world is going through a big shift with the ban on fluoro waxes and we see...

Community General

The Importance of Women in Coaching with Dr. Nicole LaVoi

Rachel PerkinsOctober 21, 2019

On the last weekend of September, U.S. Ski & Snowboard held the annual National Cross Country Coaches Symposium in Park City, UT. This year’s event included a keynote presentation from Nicole LaVoi Ph.D., co-director of the Tucker Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Dr. LaVoi is a professor of sport psychology and sociology at UMN and leads research in “the structural and personal barriers experienced by female coaches, relational qualities of the coach-athlete...

Community General News

The Women Ski Coaches Association Launches a Grassroots Mission Toward Gender Equity in Sport

Rachel PerkinsOctober 10, 2019

In August, the Women Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) set forth to balance the scales of gender equity in coaching. With Maria Stuber, head coach at the College of St. Scholastica (CSS) and former member of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, at the helm, the WSCA strives to be “the voice and future of women in coaching.” According to surveys conducted by the Tucker Center for Research on Women and Girls in Sport, since Title IV...

News Opinion

Inequity is not Self-Correcting

FasterSkierSeptember 11, 2019

We raise up all by promoting opportunities for gender equity in coaching. With the proper perspective, competition has the power to raise up. A great coach provides and promotes opportunities for improvement and growth. At its best, sport uplifts. Otherwise competition only separates a winner from the losers. Coaches only teach winning, and sport just sells cheap beer. Cross-country ski racing has an extraordinary power to teach lessons beyond the sport. Ski races are a...