Telling a ski racer, especially one as talented and accomplished as Nathan Delmar, to dial it down, even a little bit, isn’t easy for a coach.
“It’s not part of their nature, not in their DNA,” Maranacook Alpine coach Ronn Gifford said. “Nathan is incredibly quick and pretty much fearless. He doesn’t know where to put the throttle other than all the way.” The Maranacook junior kept the pedal to the metal through less-than-ideal skiing conditions during his junior year but also showed uncommon maturity by organizing a race that raised thousands of pounds of food for hungry Mainers. While he didn’t have the kind of success he was hoping for at the state meet, he did prove he still belonged with the top skiers in the state. For his efforts, Nathan Delmar is the Kennebec Journal Boys Alpine Skier of the Year for a second year in a row.
As a sophomore, Delmar led the Black Bears to the Class B state Alpine and overall titles by winning slalom and finishing eighth in giant slalom. This despite rarely reaching the finish line in practice because of his fearlessness.
So the theme for his junior year was “Find the finish.” The only problem was finding the start, as in the start of the season. A lack of snow limited him and most everyone else to mostly dry-land training well into December.
Once he started getting on the slopes consistently, though, he struggled in slalom, straddling more gates than usual. Technical issues with his inside hand and upper body that he was able to get away with in the softer snow of last year were coming back to bite him in the firmer, icier snow of this season.
“Before KVACs, he started kind of figuring it out and his skiing actually was highly-improved at the end of the season,” Gifford said. “He was much more stable on his skis and much more solid.”
Delmar admitted tough conditions frustrated him and he realized, with Gifford’s gentle prodding, he needed to slow things down a little bit, mentally as much as physically. With the help of his coaches, he knew what he had to improve besides his technique.
“Patience. I really think I learned that this season,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy. All that build-up and I just decided I have to deal with it and be patient. If the conditions aren’t great, you just have to deal with it and move on.”
Delmar said he gained his fearlessness from trying to keep up on the slopes with his older brother, Matt, and his friends, “otherwise you’d be left in the dust.” He’s grateful he’s had years of tutelage from his coaches to help refine and balance out his more instinctual traits.
“We just have really good coaches, from the middle school program on up. I don’t think people realize that,” he said. “I think they kind of take it for granted. It’s one of the reasons we have such a good program at the high school level.”
Gifford credited Delmar with maturing and taking his status as a skier others look to as an example to heart.
“His real growth through the year was more mentally than physically and technically,” Gifford said. “You could really see him grow through the season, to not see what his drawbacks were himself and work on those but in being a leader.”
To that end, Delmar organized the End Hunger in Maine Slalom at Kents Hill as part of Maranacook’s and WGME-TV’s School Spirit Challenge. The event drew nearly 50 racers from several Maine schools and raised 4,900 pounds of food as well as money for Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn.
“That was the most rewarding part of the whole season,” Delmar said.
There were other rewards, too. Despite having very little GS practice — again due to the lack of snow — he finished second in the KVAC GS championships at Black Mountain in Rumford.
He returned to Black Mountain a week later to defend his state title, but it wasn’t meant to be. Drenching rains before the race resulted in some of the most difficult conditions Gifford has seen in four decades of coaching and Delmar, who was leading by more than three seconds after the first run of the slalom and placed second in the first run in the GS, was disqualified for missing a gate in his second slalom run and lost a ski in his second GS go and finished 17th.
He returned to his usual form for the state team selection race, finishing sixth overall among Maine’s top high school skiers from all classes.
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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