Tom Upham

Tom Upham started skiing in his backyard when he was two or three years old with the help of his family. It wasn’t long before he was walking to the end of his street and another 100 feet through the woods to Bran’s Hill in Auburn where locals skied in the forties and fifties.

At Edward Little High School in Auburn he excelled in baseball and track, but it was in skiing that he made his real mark. His EL ski teams won state titles from 1958 to 1961. In 1960 he was ski meister and won the downhill in the state meet. He also won the Junior National Nordic Combined title and in 1961 won the Maine and New England Downhill Championship.

A four event skier in high school, Upham concentrated on the Nordic events in college. He skied for the University of Colorado from 1961 to 1965. From 1960 to 1968 he was a member of the US National Nordic combined teams, first as junior and then as a senior. He won the North American Nordic combined crown in 1963 and the US title in 1965. These performances earned him a spot on the Nordic combined team for the 1968 Olympics. He returned to Olympic competition in 1976 as a coach for the women’s cross country team.

While competing at a national level he also found time in 1966-67 to coach the Lewiston High Ski Team, reviving that program to win the 1967 state class B championship. In 1968 he took on the task of rebuilding the University of New Hampshire ski program and made the team an NCAA powerhouse in two years earning Coach of the Year honors in 1969. From 1968 to 1975 he served as a special technical coach for the US National cross country and Nordic combined teams, and from 1970 to 1975 was an international Nordic Combined Technical Delegate.

In business he called on his ski experience operating a ski shop specializing in cross country for many years. At the same time he helped organize the Eastern Professional Ski Touring Instructors and edited and printed their first teaching manual. Upham also became the first examiner in the i n s t r u c t o r certification progam. Retirement didn’t slow down his involvement in skiing. He provide grooming and race organization for the Titcomb Mountain cross country program for three years. During the winter of 2006-2007 he spent weekends as an assistant coach for the newly formed University of Maine Presque Isle ski team and served as a wax technician for the US Biathlon development team at the National Championships.

A lifetime of devotion to the sport of skiing as a competitor, coach and official has brought distinction to Maine skiing and earned a place for Tom Upham in the Maine ski Hall of Fame.