KENTS HILL — When it comes to sports, Anne McKee has always been a runner by trade.

A standout competitor in cross country and outdoor track, the Kents Hill School junior decided to pick up another sport, Nordic skiing, when she was in the seventh grade. While some may add a secondary — or in this case tertiary — sport and treat as such, McKee is not that type.

“She’s ridiculously coachable and she wants to learn all the time,” Steve DeAngelis, who coaches the Nordic ski team at Maranacook and a handful of individuals from Kents Hill as well, said. “If she’s doing it, she wants to be the best at it.

“…She always wants to improve her technique. That nonstop desire to improve is her hallmark in my mind. She always wants to get better.”

According to McKee, this was a breakthrough year for her. She picked up a win in the Soft 7 race on Jan. 14 at Titcomb Mountain, and went on to place 10th in the classical and ninth in the freestyle in the Class B championships. For her performance this winter, McKee has been named the 2014-15 Kennebec Journal Girls Nordic Skier of the Year.

“It was a really good way to pay off for the work I put in during the summer and the fall,” she said. “It was a really good season for me, even though I don’t put myself as a Nordic skier.”

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While running has always come first for McKee, changes in her offseason training regiment ultimately paid dividends both on the course and the mountain.

“It was a lot to do with my confidence going into the season. The (2013-14 season) I had just come off of running and it was kind of like a whirlwind,” McKee said. “This year I think I handled it really well. I started my strength training a lot earlier and it paid off.”

She also started thinking about skiing earlier this year. Generally speaking, runners gear their training toward peaking for the championship meets, yet McKee made sure to keep the ski season at least partially in her mind while preparing for the end of the cross country season.

“It’s definitely a challenge. By the end of cross country you want to be primed for the final meets, but what I kind of did was a few weeks before those big meets I thought about skiing,” McKee said. “I really have to structure my time well.”

McKee said her goal for next ski season is to finish in the top three at states, although that is not the first thing on her mind at the moment when it comes to athletics. Rather than competing in Eastern High School Skiing championships March 20-22 at Black Mountain, McKee instead elected to get right into training for what she hopes is a successful outdoor track season.

Evan Crawley — 621-5640

ecrawley@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Evan_Crawley


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