As winter approaches, the Nordic Ski team prepares for an intense season. Although practices can get long during the four months, the team has plenty of ways to keep people energized and keep the positivity up.

“We ski with the middle schoolers a lot before warm ups, so we’ll all partner up with middle schoolers,” captain Val Hart said.

The team uses some practice time to bond with middle school skiers, while also providing them more information about the upper school team.

To improve spirits before meets, the team likes to listen to music.

“We listen to anything Taylor Swift. We are all big Swift fans,” Hart said.

According to sophomore Sam Hanson, the team also spends time together getting ready for races.

“We usually have team dinners before our races, and we also have team meetings where we talk about the races,” Hanson said.

A lot of the time, bonding takes place before or after races when they play games as a group.

“We like to play ski soccer,” Hart said, “where we just basically play soccer in our ski boots and it’s very amusing.”

[In Print] This story is reprinted from The Rubicon print edition: Nov 21, 2017