Summer work brings winter payoff for young skier

ANDOVER -- Two years ago, when Hilary Rich was a 13-year-old eighth-grader, she was racing at a cross-country skiing trail called Windblown in New Ipswich, N.H., when she had the wind blown right out of her.

"I was skiing down this hill," Rich said, "and there was a sharp right turn, and I hadn't previewed the course."

So, instead, she went straight. Straight ahead, and straight into a tree. When she woke up a moment later, with a concussion, some bruised ribs, and the wind knocked out of her, she "couldn't breathe."

"I was kind of panicking," she said. "I don't really remember all that much right after."

Such an ordeal might send some young athletes to the lodge for good. But Rich, who picked up her second concussion at age 15 this winter (this time it was just the icy ground, not a tree), is still going strong. In fact, the sport of Nordic skiing has started paying the Phillips Academy sophomore and Andover native Rich rewards, after a winter of accomplishments.

After an impressive array of finishes on the regional scene, Rich led a relay team to third place and finished ninth in an individual event at the national Junior Olympic championships two weeks ago. And deciding last summer to aim at the highest levels of competition this winter, Rich has hit her mark -- and she's still on her way up.

"Today, I'm not scared, but I'm a little hesitant on the downhills in the woods," she said. "They actually told me to stay off skis for a couple weeks [this winter], because they didn't want me to ski into anything."

At this point, she's more likely to ski into the medal stand than anything else.

The trail to success

This spring and summer, if you see someone rolling around Andover on what looks like a bizarrely long pair of in-line skates, it's probably Rich, and she's probably riding her roller-skis (which, incidentally, don't have brakes) around town, training for next winter's national Junior Olympic Nordic skiing events.

The mantra in the Nordic skiing community, according to Rich, goes something like this: "The summer is when the skier is made."

Last summer was when Rich was truly made as a skier. She had been competing casually for years in youth events, and last winter, she began training and racing with the Cambridge Sports Union, a ski club coached by Reading's Rob Bradlee. Even then, she wasn't sure she'd ever be that serious about it.

But Bradlee, with the help of assistant coach Frank Feist, helped kick Rich's career into gear. Feist, who used to ski for the German national team, teamed with Bradlee to install the German training method into practice for CSU's skiers, plotting out detailed plans for each skier based on age and experience. For a sport that is considered among the toughest physically for the entire body, preparation is everything.

"We put together a program for kids who... want to compete at a national level," said Bradlee, who teaches computer programming during the day and skis during much of his free time -- he was among the best in New England in the 45-49 age group until he turned 50 last week. He said Rich " really made the commitment to work the whole year-round on it."

Six junior skiers bought into the German program, but something set off such a drive in Rich that she took the whole thing to another level. Last August, she was supposed to spend about 30-40 hours a week training, doing activities from roller-skiing to hiking to running -- but she spent 60.

"If I had done any more," Rich said, "it could have been a detriment to me. But I guess I did just enough to get me to where I wanted."

2010 or 2014?

According to Bradlee, the German model is analytical, requiring frequent assessments, measured by simple running or bounding up hills with poles to determine progress. But Rich's true progress report came in with her racing results this winter -- and it turns out she's a bit ahead of the curve.

"She's doing even better than I expected," Bradlee said. "I really think she's got a great ski career ahead of her. She's got that quality of really top athletes ... she's very self-directed."

For one, Rich transferred to Phillips Andover this year after spending her freshman year at Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, partly for academics, but partly because Phillips has a Nordic ski team.

In her weekly NEPSAC races on Wednesdays in New Hampshire or Vermont, she finished second every time but once, always trailing Steph Crocker of St. Paul's School, an elite national competitor in an older age group.

At last weekend's Eastern High School Championships in Maine, consisting of top high school skiers from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, Rich finished seventh out of 105 in the 7.5-kilometer classic-style race.

(There are two styles of skiing: classic, a conventional, tracked approach; and skate, a free wheeling, faster stroke. Rich prefers and is faster in the classic races.)

Compared with high school races, the Junior Olympic track is "totally different," said Rich. "It was kind of shocking," she said. "I think just my leap in a year's time, it's just really different. They're like, 'Oh, this is what we do on this day. You eat breakfast now, you eat lunch now.'... It's worked before, so it just kind of works for every kid."

It certainly worked for Rich.

Not only did she qualify for Junior Olympic nationals (in the 14- and 15-year-old age group), with a number of first- and second-place finishes on a tough New England circuit, but two weeks ago at Soldier Hollow, Utah, she earned two top-10 finishes among the national competition, including ninth in the 5-kilometer classic.

She also anchored a 3x3-kilometer relay team that finished third, earning a spot on the same medal stand used for the 2002 Winter Olympics Nordic events.

Though Rich still needs work with her skating -- she did a face-plant in one of the skating sprints at Soldier Hollow -- her classic technique is rock-solid, and she's finishing just her first ultra-competitive season. All things considered, Bradlee said the Olympics isn't out of the question.

"She doesn't just do what I tell her -- she really takes charge of her own life," Bradlee said. After one race, he and Feist "spent the whole car ride home discussing whether she should try for the 2010 Olympics or the 2014 Olympics."

A family affair

If she can pull it off, her parents, John and Marsha, and her younger brother, Jackson, 13, will be there to support her. The Riches are a skiing family through-and-through, and own a condominium at Waterville Valley in New Hampshire, where they have made weekly trips throughout childhood.

"John and I unfortunately are at that point where our kids are way faster than we are," Marsha said, "so we're usually way behind them, although we remember the days when...." Hilary cut in, "When you had to pull us along. 'Mom, can I grab onto your pole?' "

As a family, the Riches spend the summer hiking, and they've climbed about half (24) of the 4,000-foot peaks in New England. They plan to continue their quest to get them all this summer. Last summer, John also spent many hours out on the roads with Hilary, training.

That kind of support isn't confined to just the Rich family -- in Nordic skiing, the community is so supportive that it almost defies the spirit of competition. Rich considers Crocker a role model rather than a rival. Last year, at the high school championships, Bradlee noticed a certain type of wax was working much better than the others, and offered three blocks of it to a team that didn't have any.

"It's a really friendly sport. All the people are really nice," Rich said. "I just love it -- everything about it."

Except, perhaps, the concussions.

Mike Lipka can be reached at mlipka@globe.com.