MWSC honors Saenger Ski wax area named for departing VP

PRESQUE ISLE – Max Saenger won’t be at the Nordic Heritage Center when it hosts the 2009 U.S. Junior Olympics. His fingerprints, however, will be all over both the grounds and the organization here.

So will his name. Officials from the Maine Winter Sports Center, the Nordic Heritage Sport Club, and the U.S. Biathlon Association announced Friday the ski waxing complex at the Nordic Heritage Center will be called the Saenger Center.

Saenger, who in 1999 became the MWSC’s first employee, is leaving his position as the center’s vice president for economic development this month to become the sport manager for biathlon at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

“All this, this facility in particular, and this whole consortium of volunteers and enthusiasm in our community and the difference that the Maine Winter Sports Center has made has been due in large part to what [Saenger] has put into this community,” said Brian Hamel, the president of the MWSC board of directors, during a brief ceremony after the women’s 15K pursuit race in the U.S. and North American championships.

USBA executive director Max Cobb traveled from his office in New Gloucester to help christen the Saenger Center, contributing a bottle of champagne from his own wedding 15 years ago – Saenger was supposed to be the best man but couldn’t because he was training in Switzerland, while Cobb was supposed to be Saenger’s best man but he was traveling with biathletes in Finland. Saenger used a machete to pop the bottle’s cork.

Nordic Heritage president Melanie Stewart said Saenger taught officials in Presque Isle and at the 10th Mountain Ski Center in Fort Kent almost everything they know about organizing and running biathlon and cross country competitions.