Skiers' Shepherd

Dubbed the “pied piper of skiing in Maine,” Andy Shepard is gliding through his 10th year as the head of the Maine Winter Sports Center and he’s still enjoying the ride. Known as a keen planner with a passion for the sport, Shepard, 52, waxes enthusiastic about the Aroostook County-based program that has developed an international reputation and has drawn the World Cup biathlon competition and Junior Olympics skiing events to northern Maine.

“We wanted to put Aroostook County on the map,” says Shepard, who claims the area has some of the best ski conditions in the country. “You don’t have to go to Colorado to get a high quality ski experience. It’s in our collective backyard.”

Skiing has a rich history in Maine and first was introduced here in the 1870s, when about two dozen Swedish families were brought over to settle the north Maine woods. For generations, Swedes had used cross-country skis for transportation, hunting, and recreation and they brought them across the Atlantic to their new home.

The biathlon competition, with its cross-country and rifle marksmanship events, is an outgrowth of that heritage and could be a key to an economic upturn for the area.

“Aroostook County is one of the poorer areas east of the Mississippi River. But the people here are rich in character and spirit,” said Shepard. He said a key goal was to develop a world-class program to benefit the natives as much as the athletes.

A thoughtful communicator, Shepard had the ability to convince key stakeholders from Maine’s financial sector and the world of competitive skiing to buy into his vision for a world-class training center in the Pine Tree State.

From its start in Fort Kent, the Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC) now has grown to six venues statewide: 10th Mountain Ski Center in Fort Kent, Nordic Heritage and Quoggy Jo ski areas in Presque Isle, Big Rock in Mars Hill, Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, and Black Mountain in Rumford. Seventy percent of the 2006 Olympic biathlon team trained at the Maine Winter Sports Center; this year, MWSC has produced six viable contenders for the Olympic biathlon team, including Shepard’s 27-year-old son, Walt.

For all his passion for skiing, Shepard admits it was love for a girl in high school that first drew him to the sport. His future wife, Betsey Clark, was on the Yarmouth High School ski team, so Shepard decided to join. “It wasn’t like I was trying to impress her. Never having been on skis before, I knew that wasn’t likely. I just wanted to be around her more,” says Shepard. As a side benefit, Shepard was exposed to an outdoor sport that defined his adulthood.

Andy Shepard studied engineering at the University of Maine in Orono, where he earned an honorary doctorate in 2005, but the call of the mountains lured the then 20-year-old to Colorado, where he stayed for several years. Shepard headed back east in 1986 to join L. L. Bean’s marketing department.

While at L. L. Bean, he was the co-architect of a strategy to develop a new economic model for northern Maine. That plan included creation of a winter sports center. Shepard’s 1997 search for a venue brought him to Loring Air Force Base. But the land was too flat to develop a biathlon training course. An ideal site was found further north in Fort Kent, now home to the 10th Mountain Ski Center. The Maine Winter Sports Center became reality in 1999 on the heels of a sustained courtship of the Libra Foundation, created by the late Maine philanthropist Betty Noyce.

In its decade of growth, Andy Shepard has remained the heart and soul of MWSC. “Andy is ubiquitous in the Maine skiing scene,” says Eileen Carey, a skilled Nordic skier and vice president of MWSC. “He is a real visionary. He has an amazing ability to inspire others to turn possibility into reality.”

Kudos aside, Shepard prefers to discuss the credentials of the staff and coaches at MWSC, many of them national champions and former Olympians. Involved in skiing for close to 35 years, he is as proud of MWSC’s community outreach programs as he is of the stellar backgrounds of those who work for him. One of their biggest programs, Healthy Hometowns, has put close to 20,000 Maine children on skis to combat childhood obesity.

A problem like combating childhood obesity may seem daunting to some, but not Andy Shepard. “When many look at a situation and deem it impossible,” Eileen Carey says, “Andy asks how we can get it done.”