This winter Nashua North's Rosie Neveu skis one day, runs track the next, and succeeds in both in a big way. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Nashua High School North junior Rosie Neveu never has the winter blahs.

Why? She’s too busy to be bothered with that.

Neveu completed one of the more successful dual sport winter seasons you’ll see. She anchored the Titans 4×400 relay team that won the Division I indoor track championship. And, in the same week early last month, she finished in the top 10 overall in the Division I state championship meet, fifth in Slalom and seventh in Giant Slalom. And in the Meet of Champions the following week, was in the top 25, 18th in Giant Slalom and 21st in Slalom.

“Honestly, it hasn’t been too difficult,” Neveu said. “It (skiing) gives me an opportunity to step away from track and not be fully focused on one thing. Kind of helps me not be burned out. I enjoy having something else to go do and work on, besides running.

“It’s not too difficult to balance the two. I don’t get too tired from it. You would think with a busy schedule I’d probably be exhausted but it’s fun for me, I really like it.”

“She’s really smart and self-sufficient,” North girls track coach Renee Archer said. “So she knows her limits, she knows what’s important to her she knows what meets for skiing and track she’s got to be at. I don’t really have to babysit her or micromanage her.”

Archer works it so that she checked in with Neveu at the beginning of the week as to what the plan was for that particular week.

“It’s what she has for skiing, what she has for track, we make a plan going forward and she comes to practice when she can,” Archer said. “Just keep in communication, that’s all it is.

“I knew she was good. She was kind of sneaky good last year. The amount of passion she has for skiing, it’s just one of those things I would never try to take away from her. To see her actually starting to get recognition for (skiing) this year, I feel good about it.”

Neveu has been skiing since she was 4-years-old, and competitively – as in racing – since she was around 10. Starting then all through this winter she has been racing for Ragged Mountain. That’s been limited this winter though, thanks to her indoor track meets. Hey, something had to give, right?

“It’s fun, I really love Ragged, I enjoy it,” Neveu said. “I remember one of my first races when I was 11 years old, it was honestly really stressful for me. It was really knew, really different, especially from track and soccer, which is what I was used to at the time.

“I’ve grown to really love it. The nerves have like kind of faded away as I’ve gotten more used to it. It’s kind of gone away at this point as I’ve been doing it for so long. I still really enjoy it.”

Why race? Neveu says she got into it because she had joined what was called the Development Team at Ragged. And it led to her doing the same at North.

“We just really loved being part of the team there, just wanted to be there all the time,” she said of her and her sister. “And when the opportunity came to ski for the school as well, I was ‘Oh yeah, that would be super fun'”

Her freshman year, she didn’t do track in the winter, just skiing. But sophomore year she decided to do both.

“It actually worked out really well, because skiing is just two days a week,” she said.

High school ski teams usually compete on Thursdays and practice one other day.

What’s it like racing on the slopes?

“Honestly, it’s all about rhythm, in my opinion,” she said. “Kind of just getting into the feel of each turn, feeling the snow, feeling how to deal with it. It’s a lot of technique, and just being able to manage your speed and not get too out of control. Obviously there’s some crashes here and there. There’s ups and downs for sure, but it’s mostly mental.”

She did suffer a crash the first week of ski season, hurting her knee, but it wasn’t serious and week of healing took care of everything. But obviously Archer tended to hold her breath a little on the days Neveu would ski.

“Of course I do,” the coach said with a chuckle. “She sent me a video of the crash. That was a little tough to watch. Every time she tells me she’s going skiing I’m ‘Please be careful.’

“She had that one injury, but she’s open about it, she tells me when something hurts, and we do what we can.”

This year, Neveu developed into a solid racer for the Titans. Her plan was to just ski like it was a simple day on the slopes and let the times/points take care of themselves.

“Rosie is a tremendous skier with confidence, precision and determination,” North ski coach Pete Freeman said. “She led the North ski team in points for every race this season. She’s a top 10 skier in Division I.”

She did it by keeping the competition stress-free and fun.

“Honestly, for school ski, I try to let it not get too competitive, I don’t expect much of myself, just because I don’t want to stress myself out,” Neveu said. “So I just try to keep it all for fun, and if I end up placing well, then obviously that’s a huge plus and I’m super excited about it.

“I just got lucky enough this season to have enough time on snow to continue to improve, to be able to make it to states, so that was super cool.”

Neveu is a four-sport athlete. She does cross country in the fall, the dual season in winter, and outdoor track in the spring How do the track sports help skiing, and vice-versa?

“I think for skiing it takes a lot of lower body strength, and that obviously translates pretty well for track,” Neveu said “It’s definitely different muscles and stuff, the training. But I think especially for slalom training in skiing, it definitely helps the track, the fast kind of twitching with my legs. I notice I feel strong during ski season. And it definitely helps for endurance in a way, because some ski courses can be so long.”

And the cross country in the fall feeds into the other three seasons which last year culminated in a state outdoor championship in the 800 meter run.

“I like that (cross country) is in the woods, it’s outside, I enjoy long runs, and that definitely helps with the 800 (meter run) for outdoor. It gives a great base as well.”

While Neveu finished high in the ski post season races, track is where she got some hardware as part of North’s 4×400 state champion relay team.

“Honestly, it was incredible,” she said. “I love my team, I love these girls. I love being able to practice and improve with them. Honestly it was a kind of an upset, we weren’t super set on, going into this meet expecting to win. I think over the years, last year we also had the same championship. Being able to come back and repeat that was super important for us, especially after the team changed up a little bit. I think it was great being able to come back and do that again. We’re all super close, makes it easier, makes it more fun.”

Neveu had a busy stretch from Thursday through Sunday with the two sports and their meets this past winter, so how does she physically cope?

“Honestly, since it’s such different muscles, I haven’t noticed it affecting me at meets,” she said. “I haven’t felt a different type of soreness due to like ski racing. But also it has to do with how far into the season I am. At the start of the season, it’s going to make me more sore.

“By the end of the season, my body was in such a routine. Ski one day, run a couple days, ski another day. It just ended up working out really well, the timing.”

In skiing, slalom has tighter turns, etc. Giant slalom is a more wide open course, speeds are faster. “I like GS better, I love going fast,” Neveu said. “Usually I do better in GS; I was surprised to see I did slightly better this year in slalom. I’m not sure why; I think I had more time training in the slalom gates this year than I have in the past. I love them for both.”

TRACK SUCCESS

What makes Neveu a good track athlete?

“She’s tough,” Archer said. “She’ll literally run whatever we ask her to run, she’s that kind of teammate. She ran the two-mile last year with (the now graduated) Laura White for the first mile to try to get Laura through to get a school record time. She’ll jump in and run a 4×4. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her jump in and run a 4×1 (100) this outdoor season, but her bread and butter is going to be that 800; we’re going to focus on that and try to get her to defend her D1 and state championship. And then she will be an absolutely crucial leg on our 4×4 (relay).”

Individually, Neveu enjoys the 600 in indoor track.It’s not as long or endurance based as the 800 in outdoor, but not as short as the 400. “I like that it’s right in the middle there,” she said.

But she has a favorite.

“In both seasons (indoor-outdoor) it’s got to be the 4×4 (relay),” she said. “I really enjoy the adrenalin, I like watching my teammates race, handing off the baton, cheering each other on. It’s super fun. I like the team aspect of it.”

Neveu will make her college plans next year, but says she’d like to compete in track in college and probably stay in New England and is interested in exploring the medical field. As for skiing, she probably will forego competing at that level. She’s hoping to stay in New England, but it’s early.

The bottom line? Neveu competes, doesn’t matter what sport it is.

“Anytime she’s in any race, she’ll goes all out,” Archer said. “She’ll run through a wall for you. She’s tough. She’s a competitor. Anytime someone has a lead on her, she’ll hunt them down.

“She does what she has to do for the track team here, and she gets to go out and have a little fun skiing and now she’s getting recognition for how good she is. It’s awesome.”