There is a famous scene in the film Hoosiers where Gene Hackman, as the coach of a small-town Indiana high school boys basketball team, leads his players into the massive fieldhouse where they will play a state championship game.
The boys are clearly in awe, clearly intimidated by the idea of the space filled with thousands of screaming fans.
Hackman takes out a tape measure and asks his players to measure the distance from the free-throw line to the hoop. Fifteen feet. Then the distance from the ground to the hoop. Ten feet.
Just like back home.
Hallie Grossman '15 had her Hoosiers moment recently in a much different sport: biathlon, which combines Nordic skiing and rifle shooting.
Grossman was in Oberhof, Germany, making her Team USA debut before 20,000 screaming fans in a 7.5-kilometer sprint, part of the sport's World Cup tour.
"Even though it was disgusting weather, foggy and rainy, the huge stadium was full of fans," Grossman recalls. The atmosphere was electric, "like a Red Sox game" at Fenway Park.
As she prepared to race, Grossman got the same advice over and over: "Remember, the targets are still 50 meters away."
Just like back home.
Grossman was impressed by how knowledgeable and passionate the fans are in Germany. "There's a really big hill at the beginning of the course. It was just packed full of spectators," Grossman says. "During my warmup, I skied up the hill and people were cheering for me just while I was warming up. I just couldn't help but smile."
Grossman finished 79th, solidly in the pack, impressing teammate and Olympian Susan Dunklee.
"Oberhof isn't an easy place for a rookie because of the overwhelming crowds, the noise, and the notoriously foggy weather," Dunklee told the Team USA website. "But she put together a very solid performance and we look forward to more to come."
During Grossman's time at Bates, the environmental studies major became the only women's Nordic skier in college history to compete in the NCAA Championships all four years of her career. As a senior, she was named the Bates Female Athlete of the Year.
"Hallie has a work ethic like no one I've ever known," says Bates head coach Becky Woods '89, now in her 26th year leading the Bobcat program. "To see her hard work and her dedication really come together and to be given the opportunity to ski on the world stage, it brings tears to your eyes if you know her and if you've worked with her."
Grossman says that Woods is the reason she came to Bates.
"My mom likes to tell the story of how I walked out of Becky's office on my first visit and was like, 'I want to go there.'" Grossman says. "I have no idea if I'd still be skiing had I not gone to Bates."
After graduation, Grossman returned to her home state of Vermont and joined Craftsbury Green Racing Project, intent on continuing her Nordic skiing career. But a knee injury sidelined her almost immediately. So, for the first time in her life, she picked up a rifle, which was not as odd as it might seem.
"Craftsbury had a biathlon coach at the time, and he started working with me," Grossman said. "It started out as something fun to do with my teammates since I wasn't skiing."
In Grossman's first biathlon race, she missed every single target. Yet things got even worse in her second race.
"I remember at the first shooting stage I hit two targets and I was super-excited," Grossman said. "I don't remember the second stage, but the third one, (U.S. Olympian) Claire Egan happened to be at the race and she had to come onto the range and help me load my magazine because I was just so confused and flustered. I finished those two races and was like, 'Okay, biathlon's fun, but it's really, really hard.'"
This early in her biathlon career, Grossman is much more concerned with the process than the results.
"It's easy to be like, 'God, all these other women are so much better than me,'" she says. "But I just remind myself I've been doing this" — competing internationally — "for six months and they've been doing it for 16 years."
Bates assistant Nordic skiing coach James Upham, a former junior national champion biathlete, believes Grossman is well-suited to the sport's demands.
"The important thing in Hallie's case is that she is so mentally tough," Upham says. "In endurance sports, when your aerobic system is taxed out and lactic acid starts to build and you can't breathe and you're struggling for air, I refer to it as the 'bad place.'
"She likes that place, so she can go right to the 'bad place' and be comfortable there."
Before coming to Bates, Upham served as the U.S. Biathlon Association's development coach for eight years. While he's not Grossman's coach, more of a fan, he did give her one piece of recent advice.
"I texted her that in some of these races on the World Cup stage you're going to enter the shooting range with a German. As soon as that German hits a target, 30,000 or 40,000 people are going to erupt. Then every time they hit a target they're going to erupt again and it's going to throw you off, completely, because the ground is going to shake every time."
Just two days after her World Cup debut, Grossman competed again, in a relay event. Afterward, she sent Upham a text. It read: "I skied in with a German today."
Okay, not quite like back home.
