Bringing Life Experience to Biathlon: Sara Studebaker-Hall

Heartbeat: US Biathlon Podcast

Athlete, coach, program leader, NCAA team champion, two-time Olympian. Idaho native Sara Studebaker-Hall has spent her life in winter sport. This past February she took on the role of US Biathlon’s director of operations. A few weeks later, she and her colleagues were deep in management of how to get the US Biathlon Team home from Finland when COVID-19 travel restrictions broke out. Sara’s vast knowledge of and passion for biathlon is telling. In this insightful Heartbeat podcast, she recounts her pathway into biathlon and how she progressed. She tells an emotional story of making a pact with teammates to make the Olympic Team together. And she smiles as she talks about raising young son August just a few kilometers from the Olympic trails of Soldier Hollow. As operations director for US Biathlon, she makes it all run smoothly. And she also helps tell the story of the sport. “Communications is key.” Her in-depth conversation with Heartbeat host Tom Kelly will take you inside the world of biathlon to learn what Sara brings to the team and to clubs around the country.

TRANSCRIPT
Tom Kelly: Biathlon is a unique Olympic event. It challenges participants with opposing athletic endeavors in a singular competition. It combines the heart pumping aerobic aspects of cross country skiing match with the intense focus of precision marksmanship - two diametrically opposing forces testing every ounce of physical and mental strength of athletes. Welcome to HEARTBEAT, he U.S. Biathlon Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Kelly, and I'm proud to bring you regular insights into this fascinating Olympic sport. We hope you enjoyed our debut podcast with world championship medallist Susan Dunklee. Today, we'll take a look inside the operations of U.S. biathlon and the support it provides to athletes in clubs across the country. Our guest today is a veteran athlete and a two time Olympian. After her retirement in 2014, she expanded her role in the sport as a coach, club leader and an athlete representative. Sara Studebaker-Hall is an Idaho native who spent seven years on the U.S. Biathlon Team competing in both the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Winter Games while at Dartmouth College. She was on the 2007 NCAA champion team. She went on to coach at the University of Alaska-Anchorage and Soldier Hollow. She has served on the U.S. biathlon board and as an athlete representative to the USO Pieces Athletes Advisory Council. This past January, she was named director of operations for U.S. biathlon, making her home not far from the Olympic venue in Soldier Hollow with husband Zach Hall and their young son, August. Sara, welcome and thanks for joining us on HEARTBEAT.

Sara Studebaker-Hall: Thanks, Tom, it's great to be here.

Tom Kelly: So what has your pandemic life been like down in Midway, Utah?

Sara Studebaker-Hall: You know, I feel pretty lucky overall, we are in a relatively rural area. We've been able to get outside. My husband and I have both been working from home. And so kind of switching off who's watching August and who's working. So it's definitely has its challenges. I'm currently joining you from a closet. So, you know, we're all just doing what we can. But in general, you know, we we've been healthy. We stay in staying active. And so I can't complain too much.

Tom Kelly: Well, then I won't ask you what the view is like from the closet.

Sara Studebaker-Hall: No.

Tom Kelly: It it it is a pretty amazing place, though, isn't it? Just a great spirit of sport down there and a beautiful mountain setting.

Sara Studebaker-Hall: Oh, absolutely. You know, we when we moved to Heber, our experience there had really been as athletes and and we hadn't had a lot of experiences recently. So, you know, we moved there three years ago and saw the venue really starting to come alive with the planned return of the World Cup in it to Soldier Hollow. And it's been a really exciting time to be there. And the community has been really welcoming. And, you know, we love. I love being back in the Mountain West. So that's definitely exciting for me. And, yeah, it's it's been it's been really great.

Tom Kelly: Now, Sara, I know that when you took on this new role as director of operations from for U.S. Biathlon, you probably had these grand ideas and the things that you were going to do on day one to put things in motion. But the pandemic really changed your role when you started in February, didn't it?

Sara Studebaker-Hall: It really did. Yeah, I think I was at work for about two weeks when things really started to get shut down. And, you know, in some ways I was lucky. I was already working from home. My position is remote. So I'm still based in Heber in Utah, where the headquarters are back in Maine. So it gives us some geographic diversity with an organization, which I think is a really positive, but it's definitely suddenly became a very different situation for all of us within the organization. I mean, you know, right away, when the president made his speech about closing the borders and we were thrown into how do we get the athletes back immediately from Finland? Yeah, things have just been taking everything and every decision day by day, week by week as we move through planning and and all aspects of the U.S. Biathlon.

Tom Kelly: You know, I think most people don't realize how unique this situation is. There is no playbook. There are no guidelines that you started out with on how do I handle a team in a pandemic. So you guys have really been inventing things with good background knowledge as you go along.

Sara Studebaker-Hall: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we have a really great team. I think that the one thing that this has really forced us to do is communicate even better with each other. And so we've been, I think, doing a really good job as a staff of staying connected and making sure that everybody knows what's going on as things continue to change every day. There was a while, where things were changing every hour. I mean, I was sending updates every morning and every evening to the whole staff about what the State Department and the CDC were saying about the situation, both domestic and abroad. And, you know, now it's a little bit it's a little bit easier for us because we are out of season. So, you know, we're planning camps and Tim and law are definitely working with the brunt of that aspect. But even as we plan board meetings and think about the season ahead, there's so many unknowns and and really having to create a number of different plans, depending on what might happen, is definitely a challenge.

Tom Kelly: Sara, let's go back into your background, and one of the things that I always like to explore with biathletes is how did you get started in the sport? This is such a unique activity and everyone has this slightly different pathway. But what was it for you that got you into the sport of biathlon?

Sara Studebaker-Hall: Yeah, you know, I started skiing really young, my family was always really involved in the outdoors and skiing was a big part of our of our family actually started as an alpine ski racer. Thought I would go that direction, but was introduced to the bogus base and Nordic team when I was in sixth grade and started doing cross-country and really loved it. I just started doing that as my main sport. And I had a coach, Eric Reynolds, who had done some biathlon, and he a friend of a friend of mine on the team. And I saw a little blurb in the 98 Olympics about biathlon and just started asking him a ton of questions about the sport. And he ended up actually doing some research and finding and development camp for for her and I. In Lake Placid. An...