Croft's Crew: Cloquet athletes form special bond with assistant coach through sports

Jun. 12—Cloquet volunteer Nordic ski coach Ben Croft received an unusual phone call about three years ago from a friend in the Twin Cities who was also a Rex ski wax distributor.

"Do you know what your boys are up to?" the friend asked.

"Noooo," Croft replied.

"They're going to get suits and this and that," his friend said.

Oh, boy.

Croft has helped out Rex in the past, and the company obliged the ambitious teenage skiers by helping them out with a year's donation of ski wax. The boys eventually got their own racing suits, which they designed, and named themselves "Croft's Crew," apparently coined by current senior Josh Sanders.

Few volunteer assistants have ever been as respected.

Now, a good chunk of Croft's Crew is about to move on, finishing their final season of track and field for the Lumberjacks. Saturday is the Section 7AA boys championships in Cloquet, and you can bet Croft will be there.

While not officially a track coach, he's their biggest fan.

"He tries to sit back and watch but he'll end up telling us exactly how we got to run it," senior Croft's Crew member A.J. Maijala said, laughing. "He does coach us a little bit on the sideline. He's there all the time."

Croft doesn't take a nickel in return, but he appreciates the thanks he receives. He said it should be the other way around.

"After I finish working with them at practice, they're always saying, 'Thanks for spending time with me today,' and I'm like, 'Really?'" Croft said, before laughing. "They're just fun to be around. They're all good kids. They're smart, and they always have something going on. They're going to do this, or they're going to do that."

Yep, you can even find Croft's Crew belting out a few tunes on YouTube.

"They can all play instruments," Croft said. "They're into all kinds of different things. It's good stuff."

And a lot of those things are with Croft. In the fall and spring, it's running. In the winter, skiing. Some of Croft's Crew — boys and girls — learned to ski from him, including Anja Maijala, A.J.'s older sister, who went from late bloomer to skiing sensation. As the beginners get better, Croft will take them to junior national qualifying events from Grand Rapids to Houghton, Mich., often overnight trips where they would be joined by parents. He has dozens of skis of his own that he loans to beginning skiers, to encourage them, to see if they might learn to love the sport like he does.

In the summer, Croft has Croft's Crew race paddling early in the morning on Chub or Hay Lake, to help keep them stay physically active in the offseason while also building camaraderie. They even participate in "Adopt a Highway," helping clean up a section of highway south of Carlton twice a year.

Arne Maijala, A.J. and Anja's father, works with Cloquet's distance runners and is the Lumberjacks' Nordic skiing coach.

Maijala described Croft as the kind of guy kids gravitate towards.

"Exactly," Maijala said. "He's just so personable with them. He interacts with them pretty much year round. He is so passionate about it. And it's not just our kids. He's so supportive of all these local kids. He's gone over to Carlton. He's just that kind of guy. He helps all kids."

Croft's Crew includes distance runners A.J. Maijala, Sanders, Benjamin Bauer, Cale Prosen (track coach Tim Prosen's son), newcomer Miles Fisher and Spencer Hoeffling, who graduated last year.

"It truly is a special group," Tim Prosen said.

From skates to skis

Croft, 67, is originally from Two Harbors, where he graduated in 1972.

After high school he moved to the Iron Range and lived in Aurora for about 40 years before moving to Carlton nearly 10 years ago to be closer to his daughter and grandkids. He's a retired railroad worker.

Croft grew up playing hockey but said it started to become difficult finding goalies for pickup games as he got older.

"It always is," Croft said, before laughing. "That's why the goalies always drink for free, right?"

A late bloomer, he didn't start skating until he was 28. He quickly found his hockey background gave him an edge as Nordic skiing evolved. He's a former age-group winner of the Kortelopet, an American Birkebeiner support race, but he's too humble to pump up his accomplishments. Others can do that for him.

"Peltonen skis, it's probably the Adidas of skis, just a very well known brand within the Nordic ski community and he skied for their team when he was younger," A.J. Maijala said. "Yeah, he can still go out there (and ski with the guys), and he's not slowing down any time soon, either."

Croft got into coaching, which he's done for more than 30 years. He has had stints as a head coach but mostly has been an assistant. He has become something of an expert in terms of waxing skis, helping skiers throughout the area, though he'll never call himself an expert.

"I was waxing for kids from Grand Rapids, Ely, most of Section 7, whoever needed wax, I'd wax their skis, because of my work with Rex wax," Croft said. "I don't want to say I'm an expert, but I know what I'm doing."

After moving to Carlton, longtime friend and veteran coach Glen Sorenson asked him to help out with the Lumberjacks, and there you have it. The seeds of Croft's Crew were about to be planted.

A.J. Maijala said Fisher is a good example of Croft's impact, competing well at the state meet in only his second year of Nordic skiing this winter.

"Ben can teach a person to go really quick," Maijala said.

But perhaps a better example is Maijala himself.

Maijala quit basketball in eighth grade, saying it was a sport he should have never been playing. It wasn't for him. Croft took him under his wing, and now, Maijala might ski collegiately, and even if he doesn't, he found a lifelong hobby, a hobby instilled by one person Maijala would like to thank.

"Coach Croft is there every day, and he doesn't ask for anything in return," Maijala said. "He just knows how to ski. He knows the technique, and he doesn't just know the basics of how to ski. He knows how the pros ski. He knows how they get so fast. He'll just tell you things like 'hips up,' stuff that doesn't make any sense at first, but then after a year, as you learn what he's talking about, you just get a lot faster. He's really good."