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Coaches Around the Country: Adam St. Pierre
Fasterskier.com caught up with Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team (BNJRT) J3-J6 coach Adam St.Pierre between his daily training/coaching sessions. Adam tries to stay in top shape to keep up with the J4s and J5s from Boulder at ski practice and to be the most dominant ski/soccer player in the world.  Adam (in yellow jacket) with BNJRT kids on a training run 1. Background I grew up in New Hampshire and started ski racing in High School as a way to cross train for my other sports (soccer and track). I went to Colby College where I intended to play soccer and run track, but a funny thing happened one fall day when a girl on the ski team approached me and asked about my Eastern High School Championships T- shirt. She told me there were only 4 guys on a team with 6 spots. I thought this girl was pretty cute so I approached Coach Tracey Theyerl (now Cote), and she said I was welcome to train with the team this fall and for the winter too, if I showed some dedication. Needless to say I loved ski racing. I never got that fast, but I loved the training so I quit soccer and track and focused solely on skiing. I got better every year and even managed to meet a girl skiing too. My sophomore year I started dating a ski racer from a rival college, and we got married last summer! I graduated from Colby in 2004 and went to grad school at UNH the next fall. I studied Exercise Science in the Kinesiology department. While at UNH I began my coaching career as an assistant to Marty Hall at Bowdoin College. I moved to Boulder almost 2 years ago with that girl so she can attend law school at CU. 2. How has the Boulder Jr program grown in the 2 years you've been working with them? I'm not sure how, but it certainly has grown. Last year we had around 50 kids, this year we were more like 65 kids strong. 40 of them are J3s, J4s, and J5s (we even have a few J6s). I think by keeping practice really fun and leaving the serious training for later years we keep kids excited about skiing while they are young. If I'm lucky I can fit some actual technique instruction into each practice before their attention spans run out. It's nice to have enough kids at practice to play games (2 on 2 ski soccer isn't nearly as chaotic, or fun, as 12 on 12). Hopefully we keep growing. It means we're doing something right. 3. Coaching the little kids takes a tremendous amount of energy and patience! How do YOU do it? :) I never thought of myself as a patient person, and in many aspects of my life I'm not. But when I'm around my kids I transform. I get this patience that I didn't think existed. There are times when this patience gets tested because I expect a lot from my kids, even the youngest ones. By mid-season I expect them to know what's going on enough so that we can proceed with the fun and learning on skis without any babysitting. My secret is to envision every kid as a future Olympian. They each have their motivations and unique learning style. I try to give each kid the opportunity to get out of skiing whatever they put in. I doubt any of my 10 or 11 year olds are thinking that far in advance, but I like to imagine myself laying the foundations for their ski careers. I hope that someday, when they are on some podium somewhere they'll think of that great coach they had when they were first learning to ski. I have the pleasure of working with a great group of parents. Our club is run by a completely volunteer parent board. They take care of all of the logistics and free up myself and the other coaches to focus on what we love, coaching. This club couldn't exist without the support of the parents. I don't think I'd have the patience or the energy to coach if I didn't have them working behind the scene.  4. How about outside skiing? Other things you're into? Wait, you mean there's life outside of skiing?! That's news to me. I never thought I'd say this but I actually really love to run. In college, running meant that there was no snow to ski on, so I thought it was awful, but now I actually enjoy it a lot. I train for running races during the summer and fall and that keeps me fit for winter. This summer I'm focusing on trail running races from 4 to 50 miles long. I know it's a big range, but as long as it's on a trail I want to run it. There are some amazing trail runs in Colorado. I've discovered that I really do like to train. Most of my free time is spent training, planning to train, or just thinking about training. I wish I had this kind of motivation 6 years ago and maybe my ski racing career would have taken off. When I'm not coaching or training, I'm working as an Exercise Physiologist at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. I love getting to talk about physiology with athletes who are interested in learning, I'm sort of a dork that way. 5. Where do you foresee yourself in 10 years? 10 years from now I hope to still be a ski coach and an Exercise Physiologist. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity here in Boulder to be able to make a living doing exactly what I want to do right now, at the relatively young age of 26. Ten years from now I'd like to be coaching juniors and/or U23s who want to race at the highest levels of competition. By then my wife and I might have a little house somewhere and maybe even a little J6 of our very own! 6. Was studying to earn your Exercise/Kinesiology major at the University of New Hampshire partly influenced by your sports background? Absolutely! I've always been a science nerd. At Colby I majored in Physics and Biochemistry because they were what I found most interesting. I was lucky enough to have a great coach at Colby. Tracey taught me a lot about physiology, enough to make me want to learn more. Being an endurance athlete, a ski racer in particular, was the primary factor motivating me to go on to graduate school at UNH in Exercise Science. I didn't know I wanted to be a coach, but I knew I wanted to understand human exercise physiology.   Thanks Adam!
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