sporting life
Sky Harris and team race in the Gunflint Mail Run in Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of the Mushing Club at MTU)
Sled dog school
Clubs at MTU and NMU introduce students to mushing By Brad Gischia
A
mong the multitude of extracurricular activities that colleges offer to their students, two groups at Upper Peninsula universities stand out: The mushing clubs at Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan are believed to be the only student organizations in the country dedicated to sled dog racing. Michigan Tech’s club was established in 2018 by students Adam Schmidt and Claire Hendricks. The group at NMU started two years later. Current club president Alex Weeden was one of the founding members. “My friend group in the dorms had been running dogs since they were
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Marquette Monthly
February 2023
kids,” she said, “and I fell in the ranks.” Suz Harris, president of the MTU club, learned about the organization through a newsletter sent by their dad, a Tech alumnus. “I have always been into winter sports in general, and I love animals,” Harris said. “When fall hit the next year, I joined up.” The Mushing Club at Michigan Tech runs dogs out of a kennel called Otter River Sled Dog Training Kennel and Adventure Tours, owned and operated by Tom and Sally Bauer of Tapiola. “We’ve got 48 dogs right now,” Tom Bauer said. “If I didn’t have a posse coming with me to race, I’d keep a kennel of between 30 and 40. But since [the MTU students are]
out here helping out and interested in racing, I keep the numbers a little higher.” The interest in racing isn’t the only thing required to become a successful musher. Harris spends anywhere from two to five days a week at Otter River helping out with the care, training and running of the dogs. “If I’m out there every day, I’m training dogs,” Harris said. “Typically I’ll run my team every other day, especially when I’m training for a race, or other people’s teams if they don’t have time. Usually I’m there for four to six hours. Most of it is caring for the dogs and getting to know them.” In Marquette, Weeden said, there is a lot of interest in mushing, including on the NMU campus, but time is an issue for all students. “There aren’t many kennels we can get to nearby,” she said. “The one we’re partnered with right now is almost an