Rogan Brown served as the Head Nordic Coach for the University of Denver Ski Team for four seasons from 2021-2025. He was hired to the position on June 16, 2021 and resigned for personal and family reasons on July 2, 2025.
With Brown's help, the team has placed in the top four overall in each of the four NCAA Championships during his time at Denver, including three third-place finishes. He helped Nordic skiers earn 14 All-American awards and 23 individual victories, including 17 wins by Andreas Kirkeng (2022-2025) to tie the program’s men’s record (Pietro Broggini). Additionally, four men’s Nordic skiers have also won races at the NCAA West Regional and conference championships since 2022.
Brown guided the Pioneers to the overall Nordic regular-season title in the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association in 2025, beating out eventual national champion Utah. DU also claimed the RMISA men’s Nordic regular-season championship for the third time in four years this past season (also 2022 and 2024).
Denver picked up its first meet win since 2020 in winter 2025 at the Nordic-only Alaska Fairbanks Invitational, and graduate student Lea Wenaas won her first career individual event earlier in the season at the Denver Invitational 10K freestyle pursuit, the first victory by a Pioneer woman since Eveliina Piippo in the 5K freestyle interval start at the 2020 NCAAs.
At the 2025 NCAA Championships in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, Kirkeng earned his fourth career All-American award by picking up second-team honors in the 20K freestyle and Wenaas earned first-team accolades by placing fourth in the women’s 20K—the best finish by a DU woman in a Nordic mass start distance race at the collegiate nationals since Linn Eriksen in 2018 (third place, 15K freestyle).
The 2024 winter campaign marked the third consecutive season that Brown helped the Nordic Pioneers pick up at least three All-American accolades. Altogether, four Nordic student-athletes earned five national awards at the NCAA Championships—the most in Brown’s time leading the Pioneers.
At the 2023 NCAA Championships, Kirkeng and Bernhard Flaschberger totaled three All-American awards, with the two men’s skiers also combining for six individual victories and 12 podium appearances during the collegiate campaign.
In his first season at the helm of the Nordic squad, the Pioneer skiers won six individual races and claimed the 2022 men’s Nordic regular-season title in RMISA. As a team, DU skiing finished third overall at the 2022 NCAA National Championships, with three Nordic athletes earning All-American nods.
Brown first joined DU’s staff as an assistant coach in 2020 when the Pioneers won the RMISA Championship and earned three other top-five finishes. He served as the Interim Nordic Head Coach of the program in April 2021 before being hired full-time two months later.
As an assistant coach in 2020, he helped guide Denver to five individual Nordic wins, including Piippo’s national championship victory as a freshman. Additionally, Flaschberger claimed first-team All-American honors in the men’s 10K freestyle that year after finishing third at the NCAA Championships.
Brown first joined the Pioneers in fall 2019 after spending the previous 13 months working as the head coach for both the elite and post-graduate Nordic teams at the Bridger Ski Foundation in Bozeman, Montana.
Before getting into coaching, the University of Vermont alum raced professionally for three-plus seasons with the Sun Valley Ski Foundation Nordic Gold Team in Sun Valley, Idaho. Brown finished fourth at the 2018 U.S. National Championships in the 15-kilometer freestyle and took seventh in both the 15K freestyle and 30K classic at the 2017 U.S. National Championships. During his time at Sun Valley, Brown also helped organize and provide support with community fundraising activities for the foundation.
At Vermont, he was named to the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association’s All-East Second Team in back-to-back seasons in 2013 and 2014, claiming two podiums and recording six top-five finishes during the 2014 campaign. He finished 13th in freestyle at the 2014 NCAA Championships.
Brown capped off his collegiate career in 2015 with seven podium appearances, three EISA wins and was named to the conference’s All-East First Team and a Second Team All-American. He finished ninth in freestyle at the NCAA Championships and placed sixth at the U.S. National Championships that year in the 15K freestyle.
The Durango, Colorado, native graduated from Vermont in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He earned his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Denver in 2024.
He resides in Denver with his wife Anja and two daughters. Anja, who was a teammate of his at the University of Vermont, is also an accomplished Nordic skier as she won two NCAA individual championships in the 5-kilometer classic in 2013 and 2014.
