Film highlights local coaches, skiers
In 2019, Methow Valley part-time resident Annette Frahm began creating a short documentary film about the Methow Valley Nordic Team (MVNT) skiers and coaches. Titled “Fast Tracks,” the film has earned several awards and distinctions, including Best Director at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival.
The 20-minute film was also a finalist for Best Documentary at that same festival and was an official selection of several film events: the Mammoth Film Festival, the Frozen River Film Festival, the Wonderland Film Festival, and the Festival of Winter Cinema.
“‘Fast Tracks’ explores how four powerful women coach the young athletes of the MVNT to become champions and lifelong skiers,” a press release said. In addition to longtime coaches Betsy Devin-Smith, Leslie Hall and Laura McCabe, as well as newer coach Grace Butler, the film also features Olympian Sadie Bjornsen, who grew up in the valley and trained with the MVNT until going to college and skiing for Alaska Pacific University and eventually competing in the 2014 and 2018 Olympics. “It is unusual to have so many female voices in a sports film,” Frahm said.
Frahm has skied in the Methow Valley for 20 years and remembers reading about the remarkable young skiers of the MVNT and, on occasion, seeing them on the trails.
“The whole Nordic team is so inspiring,” Frahm said. “Those kids are just amazing. Even the little ones have really good skills. It’s fun to watch them grow up and get really good.”
“That intrigued me,” Frahm said. “How do you get all these Olympians and championship skiers in this one tiny place?” Answering that question forms the basis of “Fast Tracks.”
Generational effects
Frahm was also interested in what she calls “the generational stuff” — younger skiers hero-worshipping a skier one generation older than them, mostly based on overheard stories and the many posters decorating Winthrop Mountain Sports. Frahm recalled talking to an 11-year-old skier about her devotion to Bjornsen and learning about Bjornsen’s own reverence for McCabe.
“After Laura skied in the Olympics the valley rallied to throw her a parade,” Frahm said. “At that parade, Sadie announced, ‘I’m going to go to the Olympics too.’”
Sixteen years later, Bjornsen got her own parade, attended by many of the young skiers of the MVNT.
Frahm studied photography in school but made her career in communications, doing a lot of writing. When the economy crashed in 2011 she went back to school at the University of Washington and earned a master of communications degree in digital media.
“One of my classes was in multi-media storytelling, where I learned more about making videos,” she said. “It just clicked — ‘oh, I can use words and pictures together to tell a story.’”
The story Frahm tells in “Fast Tracks” is an inspiring one, centered around a theme that informs many of her films: people — in this case kids — learning how to be strong.
“Fast Tracks” has been screened at several small film festivals and local events, but until recently wasn’t widely available. It is now available on Vimeo on Demand: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fasttracksfilm.
