St. Lawrence University Nordic Ski Team: The Chronicles of Team Jeph

Greetings all,

Team Jeph reporting from Bozeman on the past 6 months of travels, training, and Montucky shenanigans.

After spending a long spring cooped up at home and tired of self-motivating to train, Jordan ’21 and Steph ’22 decided to join recent grad Lucy Hoch ’20 and Ingrid Thyr (Williams College skiing ’20) in Bozeman for the summer. Little did we know, the Bozone would quickly become our home away from home. Although Graham (’22) talks about his Montana hometown far too much, his exaggerations aren’t too far off—Bozeman is pretty rad.

We joined Montana Endurance Academy (MEA) with several other skiers from the EISA. Bozeman drew quite the crowd; about 50 eastern skiers made the cross-country pilgrimage out west to log some high-altitude hours in the mountains, split between 3 major training groups. Thankfully ski training is a COVID-friendly activity, and we were able to get some seriously good fresh-air training in on rollerskis, mountain bikes, and running shoes.

Unfortunately, our rent at the Ranch (Lucy, Ingrid, and our house) expired along with our gorgeous tans, and before we knew it Jordan was dropping Steph off at the airport with tears in her eyes and packing up the car for the drive back home to Minnesota mid-August. Team Jeph went their separate ways. Fate couldn’t keep us apart for too long, but Bozeman’s housing crisis certainly tried.

Rather than returning to SLU for the fall, we decided to take the semester off (online school for Steph, ski bummin’ for Jordan) and try to get back to the Bozone ASAP. Thankfully our lovely Crosscut Elite athletes Lucy and Ingrid had room at their new home, the Chalet, for two. After spending an epic week visiting teammate Jaden ’23 at her home in Colorado, Steph and Jordan were back in action in Bozeman. While the snow hasn’t been plentiful in Bozeman, we’re lucky to be a mere 2-hour drive from the world-class Rendezvous Ski Trails in West Yellowstone. We’ve logged many hours in the car, but they’re well-worth the mid-winter ski conditions. Last week we got to spend a couple nights in West for a mini Thanksgiving camp (complete with a 20lb turkey), and even donned a race bib for a time trial with the other college skiers.

Instead of continuing to bore you all with words, we’ll keep this update rolling with a captioned photo essay. Everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words.