Andy Rightmire of Hanover, NH
March 4, 2024
Despite a busy daily schedule spent coaching the Ford Sayre JNT kids to incredible heights (and distances!), we had a moment to hear from Andy Rightmire, a recent alumnus of the Ford Sayre Nordic Program. Read his interview below!
Andy grew up in Hanover, NH, and participated in Ford Sayre’s BKL program starting from an early age. He skied for Ford Sayre all the way through the JNT program. After graduating from Hanover High School, Andy attended Colby College where he competed on the Division I Men’s Cross Country ski team. As a Colby skier, Andy qualified for the 2020 Junior Nationals and 2021 NCAA Championships. In 2023, Andy graduated from Colby as captain of the men’s team! This season, Andy returned to the Upper Valley and has worked as the assistant coach of Ford Sayre’s JNT program. In March, Andy will be headed to Junior Nationals as a coach with Team New England. This appointment is a huge career accomplishment in its own right! Thank you, Andy, for giving your time, energy, and well-earned ski racing wisdom to Ford Sayre – and to the broader New England ski racing community!
It’s probably not easy to encapsulate your Ford Sayre experience in a single story, but do you mind telling us your most memorable experience while skiing as an athlete with Ford Sayre?
Some of my best memories from my time as an athlete in Ford Sayre came from when I was on the JNT team in high school. One of my favorite memories has to be from my senior year, while I was skiing a classic mass start at Eastern High School championships. My teammate Jacob and I had one of the best races of our lives. We were skiing towards the front for most of the race. We finished much higher than we anticipated and had the most fun either of us had ever had in a ski race. A few years later, one of my college teammates showed me a video from the front group of that race that his parents had taken, and it turned out he was also in that lead group. I had no idea. That was a fun, full-circle moment!
What positive character trait(s) do you think Ford Sayre helped nourish?
Ford Sayre was great for my independence as an athlete. I learned how to wax my skis and do all the essential things to prepare for a race weekend, as well as a lot about the bigger things that go into performing at a high level. One of the biggest things was writing a longer-term training plan, which I still use all the time for myself and the athletes I work with.
Beyond my skiing, Ford Sayre taught me so much about how to set goals both in athletics, but also just generally in life and using these goals to guide my day-to-day decisions as well as how I raced and trained across a whole season.
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Have more fun! As an athlete, I spent so much time analyzing the marginal gains that I might be able to get out of myself, but I eventually learned I raced better when I unplugged from this mindset and focused on having fun with racing. The community around ski racing is incredible and has quickly turned into one of my favorite parts of racing and coaching.
How do you deal with pressure?
This is one of the hardest parts of skiing at any level! Luckily, I was never in a situation where I felt external pressure, but I always put myself under huge pressure to perform. The best way to handle this is to spend time with your teammates and friends you are racing with. Whether it’s playing games the night before a race or warming up together the following day. This takes your mind off any pressure you’re feeling and helps most athletes race well!
Do you have a childhood hero?
I always loved watching the best classic skiers on the World Cup. Iivo Niskanen, Marit Bjorgen, and Didrik Tønseth were some of my favorites to watch.
What are your passions in addition to skiing?
I love doing anything that will get me outside! Whether it’s cross-country skiing, running, biking, or backcountry skiing!
Now that you’re a coach helping others chase their dreams, what aspects of coaching make you feel most fulfilled?
This might be too easy of an answer, but it’s always fun to work with athletes on days where it all comes together for them in a race they have been looking forward to all year. Not every day will go as well as they hope, but when it does work out, it’s fun to be a small part of that and see the joy it brings them, regardless of whatever goal they achieve.
If you could invite any two people (from real life or fiction) to join you skiing who would they be and why?
Peter Northug for the pure entertainment. I think hearing about his career would be fascinating. My second would probably be Kikkan Randall. It would be great to hear her experience helping build the U.S into a skiing powerhouse.
We love that Andy has returned to Ford Sayre to help guide our JNT athletes along in their own ski racing journeys – and to find joy for himself in the process! Our community thanks you, Andy, for teaching the JNT-ers how to have fun, train hard, set goals, lean on teammates, and ski super fast. Our Ford Sayre programs continue to thrive because of positive, energetic, generous role models like Andy!
