He'll Steer You Right -- Fred Veler Is An Expert In Orienteering - And At Motivating Students

Fred Veler is a talker and a doer.

Dinner burns while he talks. His wife calls to see if he can meet her. He says yes, he's talking, but he'll be done soon. Talking? Forget it, she says, no telling when he'll be done.

"I'm gregarious," Veler says. But more than that, he is in love with the things he does, with athletics and science, both of which he teaches at Marshall Alternative School in Seattle.

"I could tell you all the kids I've coached," he says after giving a rundown on a basketball team he coached years ago.

His athletes remember him, too.

"He was wild and crazy then, and he is wild and crazy now," says John Stifel, who lives in Pasadena, Calif., where he was coached by Veler as a speedskater in the 1960s. On Sundays they would run over the hills in Griffith Park. "We would fly downhill like a couple of crazies and he'd always be yodeling."

Nowadays, Veler is especially excited about orienteering, sort of a mix of cross-country running and map reading. Runners are armed with a chart and a compass, and must race along a pre-set course.

Veler, 54, coaches the U.S. national team. As a competitor, he has won national championships in three age groups.

"There are 500 to 600 active orienteers in the state and three times that in British Columbia," he says. "Together we have the most active schedule in the U.S., 70 events per year."

Veler learned about the sport when he lived in Norway, where

orienteering is as popular as basketball is here.

Mac MacDonald, a cardiologist at The Everett Clinic, teamed with Veler last year to win a national orienteering event called the ROGAINE (Rough Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance) - 12 hours of continuous hiking and running and endurance.

Says MacDonald, who usually competes against Veler: "He's funny, witty and intense, and focused when it comes to sports. We can think back to a race or meet we were in years ago and he can re-create it. It's almost like recalling the New York Times crossword puzzle from two weeks ago. It just reflects the intensity he brings to it, burning it into your brain."

Mistake was his break

Veler, who preaches the advantages of sports and the outdoors, fell into athletics by accident.

Someone made a mistake when he entered the 10th grade at Garfield High School in Los Angeles. "I was signed up for sixth-period P.E. by a mistake on the schedule. Sixth-period P.E. was for sports teams. I showed up and stood around with a bunch of other kids. Two big, burly guys came out and said, `All you football guys follow us.' I was only 5 feet tall at the time. So the biggest guys followed them. Then a tall guy came and said, `All the basketball players follow me.' Then a little guy with a friendly smile came and said, `The rest of you come with me.' "

And that is how a junior high chess champion and "science and math nerd" came to be on the high school cross-country team.

"I was a horrible runner. I finished 15th in my first race." As bad as Veler was, the coach found encouraging things to say about him and urged him to keep at it.

That encouragement not only became the basis for years of winning championships in several different sports, but it showed him how to coach and teach.

"The most important thing is that you keep encouraging kids, like my father and my coach encouraged me, no matter how you perform."

Building kids' self-esteem

MacDonald says educating young people is the one thing Veler gets as excited about as sports. ". . . Dealing with kids has always been his love, especially ones who've had it a bit tougher. He sees himself as a champion of the little guy. He can throw a lifeline to them and give them a chance to be inspired and to make it."

Education ought to encourage children to express themselves in any way they can, he says, but instead it's often restrictive. "Real education stops at age 5 when we go to school," and it gets worse in the higher grades.

Veler favors hands-on education, giving students a chance to teach themselves by accomplishing something, and to teach each other. If you watch kids teaching each other the intricacies of baseball or basketball, he says, "you know they can feel good about learning." And that kind of learning fosters real self-esteem, "as opposed to false esteem, because it's based on accomplishment and not compliments, which really don't mean anything."

Veler's parents let him pursue all the sports he wanted: figure skating, speed skating, tennis, downhill skiing. At 17 he became a ski mountaineer instructor, the youngest person to pass the test.

He moved from college to college, then to Colorado for a while to work on his skiing, and finally to Pasadena City College, where he changed his major from math and science to physical education.

One year, when there was no snow in Southern California, he switched from skiing to speed skating, hoping to make it to the Olympics. He spent four months working on his technique in Norway. He didn't make the Olympics. Although he'd beaten the top U.S. distance skater, he didn't have the money to get back to the States for the trials. But he learned a lot about training and became the head coach of the Southern California Speed Skating Association when that club was cranking out Olympic contenders in the mid-1960s.

Stifel says that Veler, while coaching him in the '60s, was a great motivator. "He convinced me to keep coming out, even though I was a stumblebum. He helped me develop as a person through sports. I had been a reclusive person in high school."

In 1967, after the training rink closed and he finished college, Veler moved to Norway, where he taught school and raced for five years.

Veler left Norway because "time came for me to decide what to do for my children" - two more sons had been born in that country "They might not be able to achieve their potential because of the class system there. They wouldn't be accepted as real Norwegians."

In 1972 he chose Australia for his new home, he says, because Richard Nixon wasn't the president there.

He spent 14 years in Australia, coaching and teaching, and came back to the U.S. 10 years ago because his three sons wanted to finish their education here.

Veler worked with the Special Olympics for a couple of years and with the Boys & Girls Club in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, where he met his current wife, Martha Swift, who was a volunteer there.

In the classroom and on the field, court or course, Veler encourages students to think and do for themselves. The beauty of orienteering, he says, is that it is "self-learning, self-gratifying and self-challenging."

It gives participants a chance to reflect, to enjoy nature, to learn about geology and math and to improve their physical fitness. It even strengthens morality, he says ("this country stands in great danger because of the lack of morality"). A lot of orienteering is done on the honor system.

"I've never seen anyone I've taken to the outdoors whose whole attitude didn't change."

Veler participates in about 20 weekends a year, and was a prime organizer of the second-largest orienteering event ever held in North America.

This summer he'll spend two months in Europe coaching the national orienteering team.

MacDonald says the U.S. team doesn't stand much of a chance against the Europeans, but thinks that if anyone can create a competitive team in the next few years it is Veler, who has turned losing teams into winners on three continents.

Says Veler: "World-class is more a matter of attitude than anything else. If you think you are world-class, you will be."