Team Birkie 2024/2025

By Chad Samela

Chad Salmela is a renowned coach, sports commentator, and former professional biathlete, now serving as the High-Performance Manager of Team Birkie. Known for his passionate connection with athletes and the nordic skiing community, Salmela transitioned from a successful international biathlon career, representing the U.S. in the World Cup and Winter Olympics, to sports commentary, becoming a fan favorite with his energetic style and expert analysis. In addition to his role at Team Birkie, he continues to coach the men's and women's cross-country teams at The College of St. Scholastica, where he has built a strong, enduring program.

After a stint as the head coach of the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team, Steve Gaskill moved to Minneapolis in 1987, looking to make a difference. Connecting with some of the Midwest's most talented up-and-coming athletes and support from America's biggest ski race, Team Birkie was born, and it had an immediate impact on Midwestern ski racing.

Team Birkie has re-emerged in the modern era to re-engage Gaskill's initial vision—creating a community-supported ski program to deliver skiers to the highest level of the sport.

Re-engaging Gaskill's initial effort decades ago, Team Birkie is again at the top of a performance pyramid for all clubs in the Central Region. Recognizing the need, Central XC Skiing (CXC), the Loppet Foundation, and the American Birkebeiner Foundation revived today's Team Birkie, purposely and purposefully nodding to Gaskill's efforts over thirty years ago.

The need is apparent and would have thrilled Gaskill in the 1980s. Over the 2024 summer, Team Birkie teams served nearly fifty athletes from its Twin Cities headquarters at the Theodore Wirth Trailhead.

Recognizing a growth probability coming out of the 2024 season, Team Birkie adjusted its structure, titles, and staff to meet the new needs for 2025.

Teams were renamed and slightly re-defined to better capture the level at which the athletes have competed, and the structure was designed to serve as effective, appropriate development pathways.

The former Elite team was renamed and structured into two teams.

The first is the World Team, designed for athletes racing on the World Cup. Olympian and U.S. Ski Teamer Kevin Bolger; U.S. Ski Team member Zak Ketterson; World Cup racer and four-time American Birkebeiner champion; Alayna Sonnesyn; Estonian Olympian Mariel Pulles and countryman Christopher Kalev, and U.S. Olympic biathlete, Paul Schommer, represent Team Birkie at the highest level.

The second team is the Continental Team, designed for athletes racing primarily on the domestic continental cup, looking to qualify for United States teams competing in Continental Europe. Recent college graduates Gretta Scholz (Colby), Henry Snider (Michigan Tech), Luci Anderson (New Hampshire), and Aidan Ripp (Paul Smith's) make up our 2025 Continental Team.

The Regional Team fills gaps for post-graduate high school and collegiate athletes with no other clear resources or training environments, working toward a more competitive future. College graduates Emma Stertz (St Scholastica), Dolcie Tanguay (Paul Smith's), and Connor Roberts (Clarkson) are joined by high school post-grad David Ronnevik (Fergus Falls).

The Marathon Team held onto its name from 2024, serving a mix of professionals and long-time community racing standouts. It created a training group focused on regional and national ski marathon races, spreading the love of ski racing around the region and the country. Returning members Delaney Fitzpatrick, Jenna Nelson, Sam Holt, and Zach Nelson are joined by Maxwell Turnberg (former U.S. Junior World Championship team) and Northern Michigan University standouts Nicole Eliasson and Vivian Johnson.

Team Birkie Ambassadors have a unique bond with the American Birkebeiner and Midwestern ski racing. Ambassadors serve the sport and Team Birkie in the spirit of The American Birkebeiner's long-term positive influence on American skiing across the country. Two-time Birkie winner and U.S. World Championship member David Norris, his wife and Australian Olympian and Birkie Champion Jessica Yeaton, and 2006 U.S. Olympian Lindsay Williams are our ambassadors.

Team Birkie's largest annual project is the summer Collegiate Program. The Twin Cities is a haven for American collegiate ski racers needing sound training guidance and partners. The college program brought 26 collegiate skiers together with the year-round teams, bringing a broader sense of community of athletes training at a high level, along with off-season coaching analysis and optional testing.

The bridge from the collegiate program to our upper-echelon teams is through our Development Team. Team Birkie recognizes that the opportunities for post-college advancement are among the United States' greatest opportunities to reach the highest level in the sport. Ensuring NCAA eligibility stays intact is paramount to the Development Team; Team Birkie provides allowable support for collegiate skiers on the periphery of their college programs as they approach graduation. For 2024-25, team members are Benon Brattebo (Vermont), Maggie Wagner (Middlebury), Colin Freed (Michigan Tech), and Morgan Richter (Bowdoin/Montana State).

Engaging Biathlon

Team Birkie has also taken on skiing and training support of several athletes focused on biathlon. Paul Schommer is a 2024 Olympian living in Fargo, ND, competing for a spot on the 2025 World Championship team after sustaining an injury last season that kept him off the national team. Luci Anderson is a Twin Cities native and NCAA All-American for the University of New Hampshire, working with both Team Birkie and the U.S. Biathlon Team's X Team, with an eye on international biathlon competition with continental cup cross-country skiing with Team Birkie as sustaining a developmental tool. Emma Stertz and Dolci Tanguay are former junior world championship team members with sights set on the U.S. Biathlon Team IBU Cup and World Cup rosters.

Coaching Staff Change-ups

To service the World and Continental teams, Julie Ensrud replaced Chad Salmela as the program's new head coach, with Salmela assuming the title of High-Performance Manager, a title more fitting to the role he carried through the 2024 season. Ensrud is a former Team Birkie member after a successful NCAA skiing career at the University of New Mexico and Northern Michigan University. She hails from Norway, where her father and brother are also involved with Norwegian ski racing development. Taking the helm of the training focus of the program was a welcome step forward for Team Birkie, and Ensrud's positive impact is being felt immediately.

Supporting Ensrud and the entire coaching staff, Salmela is implementing performance testing and profiling to help establish stronger, long-term insights into each athlete's training year, race season, and career by identifying, responding to, and cataloging personal training responses. It is the goal of Team Birkie's coaching staff to better understand training's effects on individuals, both long- and short-term.

Successful Minneapolis Ski Club junior coach and 2024 Trail to Gold recipient Erin Moening assumed the assistant head coach position. Moening's eye for talent and development, combined with a passion for long-term athlete development and an incredible organizational and communicative ability, make her a natural coach of the summer college and regional programs, recruiting to our Regional and Continental teams while implementing sound organizational practices and forward-leaning organizational processes.

Jake Stiele was hired as coach for at-large club support for junior development, the Marathon team, and training and race support for camps and the competitive season of Regional and Continental teams. After a part-time role in 2024, his effective communication and ability to rapidly adapt, stay task-focused, deliver on expectations, and natural rapport with athletes were clear assets to our coaching staff in 2024. Accordingly, Stiele moved to full-time coach for 2025.

Team Birkie is a community-supported team, operating on donations from the skiing community. We are committed to changing athlete support expectations for the top American athletes in the sport of cross-country skiing. In 2024, we added stipends to our World and Continental tier athletes to cover training, air travel, and living expenses, in addition to covering official team training camps and competition schedules. For 2025, we secured TAMARACK HEALTH as a corporate Healthcare Partner providing fundamental health care for all our athletes at no charge to them. We are currently engaged in a campaign to provide free housing options at our training locations for our athletes.

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*all photos courtesy of Team Birkie