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Fools Announce Their Summer Production Page 3
Bryant Dunn to Speak on Fly-Fishing the Himalayas, Thursday
Szabo Reviews Medicine Mountaineering Book Page 6
Love: Do Something That Makes You Smile
read about it on PaGe 10
Page 11
A p r i l 3 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 1 4 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Defining
Kapala
SKI HALL OF FAMER
STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Ian McFeron plays Saturday night in Hailey. COURTESY PHOTO
Brewery Concert to Feature Ian McFeron BY KAREN BOSSICK
I
an McFeron could easily have been teaching at an inner-city school this week. But, instead, the Seattle-based folk rocker will be in Hailey playing selections from his seventh studio recording, “Time Will Take You,” which he just released on Tuesday. McFeron will play songs from the album during a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Sun Valley Brewing Co. in Hailey. The album, which was produced by Doug Lancio—the Grammy-nominated producer for Patty Griffin—almost didn’t come to fruition. After a decade of touring nationally and internationally, McFeron was considering a career change. He was playing 200 shows a year but still living hand to mouth. Unable to make a decision whether to teach or continue being a musician, he penned “That’s the Truth,” a song about getting unstuck and searching for new bearings in confusing times. As he wrote the song, he realized he had love, he had music to write and he had enough money to get by. And, soon, he found himself in a recording studio with his fiddler Alisa Milner and bassist Norman Baker, as well as Brad Pemberton and pedal steel player Jon Graboff of Ryan Adams’ Cardinals and Nashville-based piano player Micah Hulscher. The album’s name, “Time Will Take You,” is a line from one of the songs. But it also offers a message of comfort, a reminder that hard times pass. “It’s a central theme—that time has a way of carrying you, even when you feel frozen in space,” said McFeron. “With enough time and enough hope, you get to where you are meant to be.” The album features fewer stories of heartbreak and more stories from the road, along with references to the things you don’t lose to foreclosure or a broken stock market ticker—things like friends and family. “It’s a brighter record than ‘Summer Nights,’ which I loved for its late-night introspective mood,” said McFeron. “The new songs are more upbeat and fun and more playful, although it still digs into some soul searching.” Then, on Sunday, April 7, local band Finn Riggins, who just finished a huge tour with Built to Spill, will take the Brewery stage at 9 p.m. Cover for that show is $3/person. tws
R
ick Kapala rubs his toe in the snow and scowls. Instinctively, he knows the young skiers on his ski team are going to have problems with snow building up under their skis given the spring snow conditions at the Lake Creek training area. He throws a bunch of no-wax skis in the tub behind his snowmobile and ferries them out to the ski tracks where he begins handing them out, along with some skiing advice. “Peter, we want your arms swinging full extension, not that short little swing,” he tells one young skier as he approaches the staging area. “Be sure your nose is over your knee—you’re maybe not as centered as you could be,” he tells another. “Go back down there when (Zachary) Lindahl comes around. Jump on behind him and mimic him as he goes around the track.” The young racers circling the trails hang on every word. After all, Kapala has been named the U.S. Coach of the Year several times and his program has twice been named the U.S. CrossCountry Club of the Year. What’s more, the man who was inducted into the Sun Valley Ski Hall of Fame earlier this year has coached internationally for the United States at world championships and world junior championships. “Rick has built an amazing program—he’s well known across the world for his coaching skills and what’s he’s done with these young athletes,” said Bob Rosso, who was involved with Sun Valley’s Nordic race program in its infancy. Kapala himself aspired to be an Olympic wrestler but an injury he sustained during a pick-up football game at Michigan Tech forced him to drop contact sports. He began cross-country skiing with his college buddies—his “tribe,” as he calls them—to stay fit and was smitten with the sport’s challenge and solitude. “Wrestling is a tough sport—you have to diet, you have to be one-on-one with another person, you’re pushed to a really high level of discomfort, which I liked,” said Kapala, who majored in biology. “In many ways, cross-country skiing is similar—you’re on a team but it’s an individual sport that requires a lot of individual sacrifice. What’s different is your gym is the great outdoors, whether you’re roller skiing or running through the woods.” Kapala admits that he was never the strongest guy on the team but he did well enough to earn a scholarship. “The coaches were accepting of me as not the best guy on the team but as an important component of the team—I was always made to feel wanted,” he added. Kapala says he’s tried to carry that philosophy over to his own program. “We want to win ski races, but that’s not the point. Most of the kids in our program will not go to the Olympics—maybe they will not ever race. But that doesn’t mean their participation is not important, that they can’t use their time with us as a vehicle for human growth. “We’re not fighting world hunger here. The kids know I’m competitive, but I never let that cloud our big mission, which is to
Rick Kapala says he strives to be a servant when coaching. His craziest dream, he said, is to host a World Cup Nordic race in Sun Valley.
get kids out of doors and have them learn to push themselves beyond their comfort level. At the end of the day, all we’re doing is skiing around in circles with funny little suits and sticks on our feet. But I watch them and I know they’re going to be successful human beings. I get to see them grow up, become confident, ready to take on the world.” However understated, Kapala and his coaches have had some notable successes at the highest levels of the sport, from Morgan Arritola and Simi Hamilton, who competed in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., to more than three dozen kids who have become national champions and gotten invites to such notable events as the Scandinavian Cup and world junior teams. Kapala says he learned more from Arritola than, he’s sure, he ever taught her. Ditto for many of his other athletes. “You don’t make Olympians out of your athletes. They’re given
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