Bodensteiner to Drive Resources for USSA's Five Sport Programs

Cites regional development, SuperTour as key to continued Nordic success

By Dean Woodbeck

Luke Bodensteiner, director of cross country programs at USSA since 2001, has been named associate athletic director of high performance for the organization. His main role will be making sure the right resources get to the right places.

For USSA, this move adds some centralization back to what had become a decentralized organization, with each sport director responsible for developing their own plans and marshaling resources to support those activities.

“Over time, we found that, as we built out the different sports, they were quite different in their approaches,” Bodensteiner said. “There are different demands and you can’t apply one model to each sport and be successful."

But along with the benefits of five different sport directors operating their own programs came some issues with prioritizing the activities of all of the support functions at USSA.

“I’ll be responsible for coordinating the rest of the company around the sport directors’ plans,” Bodensteiner said. “I’m not driving the sport plans; the sport directors are the experts. But I will take cues from those directors and make sure they get the resources they need from such areas as sport science, education, nutrition, education, medicine, communications, fundraising and marketing.”

“This is a strong step for our organization to provide greater high performance support for each of our USSA support programs,” according to USSA president and CEO, Bill Marolt. “Luke is a strong strategic planner who can coordinate athletic performance support to help each of our sports.”

Bodensteiner has worked at USSA for 12 years. “I know the company well and know the personalities,” he said. “I have a good handle on the overall philosophy and direction. This is good for me and for the Nordic program to have some change and inject some fresh ideas.”

USSA has appointed John Farra as the new director for Nordic programs. He joins the staff from his position at the Maine Winter Sports Center. He will take on the responsibility of overseeing pipeline programs in clubs and regions around the country in cross country, Nordic combined and ski jumping. He will also be responsible for management of elite national teams.

Overall, Bodensteiner believes he is leaving his former University of Utah teammate a program headed in the right direction.

“We still have a big system to build out in cross country,” Bodensteiner said. “We have a strong elite team, although it is small compared to other nations. We have good development programs, but they need to become more robust. We also need to determine how best to relate with athletes who want to take the NCAA track so we don’t hold back their development.”

He also cited the development of regional organizations and the need to further integrate their work with the USSA. He sees positive relationships developing as USSA provides top-down planning, development and support, while the regional development organizations gather grass-roots support.

“I think this will be a good sustainable system, with the regional organizations having autonomy,” he said. “They can raise funds in their own way and get their communities charged up. We need to continue to find what the relationship will be between these organizations and USSA.”

He also pointed to a healthier SuperTour as a key to continued success of U.S. cross country skiing.

“The SuperTour was at a good level about four years ago,” he said. “It has proven to be a good engine for development of the sport and enabled longer careers. It is at the point where elite development clubs can build around the schedule. But the payoffs are still small, with less than $1,000 awarded for winning a race, and the schedule fades away after mid-February. We need to keep bridging the gap between our domestic efforts and the World Cup."