FAIRBANKS - For young, up-and-coming Nordic skiers in Fairbanks, it’s a good thing Pete Leonard wasn’t a great collegiate skier. Had that been the case, he might be chasing his own Olympic dream instead of teaching skiers how to build theirs.

As coach of FXC, the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks’ junior racing and training program, Leonard works with approximately 30 skiers ranging in age from 12 to 18 who want to push themselves to new physical and mental limits. He helps them devise a demanding training regime and formulate a plan as to where they want to go.

“It’s about achieving your goals, whether your goal is to be skiing in college, the Olympics or world junior (championships),” Leonard said of the FXC philosophy. “For some kids it’s making the state team.”

Leonard, 27, grew up outside Boston and skied at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he was captain of the ski team his senior year. During college, he was a hard worker but his race results never matched his work ethic. He put it all on the line during his senior year, training an ungodly 600 hours that year.

“I sort of decided my senior year that if I didn’t qualify for the NCAAs that I should look outside racing,” he said.

As it turned out, Leonard didn’t qualify for the national championships. But he felt like he had put too much effort into skiing and loved the sport too much to simply abandon it. That’s when he turned to coaching.

Leonard took a job as an assistant coach with the New York Ski Education Foundation in Lake Placid, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics. He hosted clinics for skiers ranging in age from 8 to 60.

He also spent two years as an assistant coach for the Mid-Atlantic Junior Olympic Team and two years as head coach and waxing coach of the New York Eastern High School Championships team.

Coaching suited the affable, always-smiling Leonard, who discovered he liked working with kids and helping them develop goals. Leonard heard about the FXC job through “the good ‘ole boy network,” as he called it, and was intrigued. He had never been to Alaska, but he had heard about it.

“I knew of Fairbanks’ reputation as a skiing community,” Leonard said.

“I knew it had hosted a lot of big national races. I had heard the stories about how the groomers could take

1 inch of snow and make

4 inch deep tracks.”

The opportunity to help develop the ski club’s fledgling training program appealed to Leonard, who was only 23 at the time. He took the job in May and drove to Alaska in June.

Culture shock

As he drove north in his jam-packed 1997 Volkswagen Golf, though, Leonard began to wonder if he had made the right decision.

“Actually I got kind of scared driving up here,” Leonard recalled. “I was going to Alaska and it was like, ‘Where are the mountains? What’s going on?’”

“I figured I’d run into the Canadian Rockies in Alberta,” he said. “I was pretty worried all the way to Fort Nelson (British Columbia).”

Finally, the mountains Leonard had been waiting for materialized. Alaska was real. All too real, as it turned out, at least for the first month. The long daylight hours were hard to get accustomed to.

“Adapting to Alaska was an eye opener,” he said. “There was all this sunlight. I was in a strange state for about a month.”

Though it took him a little while to adjust, Leonard appears to fit in pretty well. He’s been adopted by the Fairbanks ski community and is looking to expand his Alaska horizons. He’s done a few canoe trips that he’s enjoyed and would like to do a big river trip some summer. He also wants to try hunting and is thinking about taking a mountaineering class at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in spring.

High praise

Fairbanks’ Nordic ski guru, John Estle, the former UAF and U.S. Ski Team member, has nothing but praise for the job Leonard is doing with FXC. Grooming competitive skiers is integral to the long-term success of the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks and Leonard is perfect for the job, he said.

Leonard relates well to young skiers, is knowledgeable in both the physiological and technical aspects of skiing and is passionate about the sport, Estle said.

“The guy just has a tremendous love of the sport, which is really important for a coach,” said Estle, who is the club’s racing coordinator. “He’s really in it for the kids as opposed to being it for himself.”

Former Lathrop High standout Heather Edic, who trained under Leonard for two winters and is skiing and running at the UAF, will testify to that.

“When I was picking colleges in my senior year, he made a list of all the colleges he thought I could ski on, he told me the probability of being on the travel team, he found out which schools offered engineering, which is the degree I want, and he told me which coaches I would get along with and the ones I might not get along with,” Edic said. “He definitely puts time into each individual. That makes you feel important.”

Even now, Leonard continues to offer Edic advice even though she’s no longer regularly skiing with FXC.

“I skied by him the other day and he gave me some help,” she said.

Powerful influence

As a coach, Leonard is demanding but in an inspiring way, Edic said.

“He expects you to perform in a way you might not have thought you were able to,” she said. “Him saying ‘good job’ really, really means something because he always expects more out of you.”

That pretty much sums up Leonard’s coaching philosophy.

“It’s about raising the bar,” he said of his approach to coaching. “The pursuit of excellence in a group-teaching you about yourself, your limits and what you’re capable of.”

That’s one of the reasons Leonard pushed for the return of the Cross-Country Alaska Junior Championships, which FXC will host in Fairbanks in late March after a two-year hiatus. The competition is geared for skiers 15 and younger.

“The idea is to have middle-school and younger kids get involved in competition,” Leonard said. “We have some high-level comp programs in Alaska,” Leonard said.

Though he has a degree in the geosciences and could probably pursue a “real job” in Alaska, Leonard said he intends to keep coaching.

“As long as I can put food on the table and pay the bills,” he said with his trademark Colgate smile. “I love working with kids and I love skiing. The sport has a powerful influence on other peoples’ lives.”