Dave Wood is enjoying life outside the pressure-cooker.
A year ago at this time, he was working full-throttle as head coach of Canada's national cross-country ski team in anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Wood's efforts preparing his athletes resulted in the best showing ever for the Canadian men's team in an Olympic competition.
Despite the team triumphs, after 15 years as a national team coach, Wood grew tired of the politics that go with running a national team program dependent on federal funding and packed up his home in Canmore and moved to Rossland.
He's back teaching at the grassroots level, and he's enjoying the job.
Wood, 56, has taken on the duties as coach of the Black Jack Cross Country Club and he was in Prince George a month ago with eight of his club skiers for B.C. Cup races at Otway Nordic Centre.
"It's nice to see young people that are motivated to do well, and that motivation is pure," said Wood. "They're not trying to become TV stars or make a million dollars at this stage of the game, they just want to be a good skier."
If that's the case, Black Jack skiers are in good hands. Under Wood's watch, the national team achieved unprecedented success on the World Cup circuit and at the Olympics. That started with Becky Scott and Sarah Renner when they both won medals in 2002 in Salt Lake City, and continued in 2006 when Renner and Scott won team silver and Chandra Crawford won gold in the sprint.
The breakthrough for the men came at the 2010 Olympics at Callaghan Valley, where Devon Kershaw had two fourth-place finishes and Alex Harvey, Ivan Babikov and George Grey all made the top 10.
But Wood's patience with the national program and how it was being administered ran out after the 2010 Olympics and he stepped down from his position.
"I always believed we did everything as best we could and in all my years with the national team, with the resources we had, we couldn't have done anything better," said Wood. "It should have been a great time [after the men's team's Olympic triumphs] but for me it was not a great time. because of the internal [bs] with Cross-Country Canada.
"I had so many good years with other skiers, with Sarah Renner and Beckie Scott, Milaine Theriault and the Fortier sisters [Jaime and Amanda]. In the years we were getting started, prior to 2002, there was me and Clive Burroughs and no money, but we hustled and hustled, and that was the start."
Wood grew up in Prince George, is the former head coach of the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club racing team, and, until he joined the national team in 1995, was head of the provincial training centre program based at Otway. Like Caledonia's, the club program in Rossland is small, and Wood realizes what he's up against trying to get more kids involved.
"These days, the competition is hanging out on the street corner doing nothing, not any other sport," Wood said. "I know the alpine program in Rossland isn't struggling, but they're always hustling to get more kids in involved. The only thing around our area that's big is hockey."
But in a city the size of Prince George, he thinks there's great potential for growth in ski racing and that will only increase as more people get exposed to cross-country and biathlon at the 2015 Canada Winter Games. Wood was the B.C. team head coach at the 1995 Canada Winter Games in Grande Prairie, and saw how the Games improved that city. He predicts similar effects on Prince George in 2015.
"The legacy is facilities," he said. "In Grande Prairie before the Games they had no cross-country facility and after the Games they had a very good cross-country facility.
"The potential improvements and the benefits for everybody here will be huge. My understanding is there will be more lit tracks and more competition tracks and more of everything. I'm sure they will do something more with the day lodge as well. To me, the benefits versus the work that goes into it, there's no comparison. The club will really benefit from it."
