Mound-Westonka senior Scott Harrison, a pretty fair cross-country skier in his own right, thought back a couple of years, when he first started training Zak Ketterson, the Bloomington Jefferson sophomore who has spent all but one week as the No. 1-ranked skier in Minnesota.

What, Harrison thought, is this youngster doing hanging with the big boys?

"I'm good friends with his older brother, who's a great skier," Harrison said. "When I first met [Zak] and didn't know him very well, it bothered me a little. But once I realized how good he was, I stopped thinking about that. He'll probably end up in the Olympics someday and I'll be able to say I used to ski with him."

Ketterson has the athleticism, size, stamina, work ethic and a drive to improve to be an elite-level skier. What sets him apart is his natural technique on skis. He is to high school cross-country skiing what Joe Mauer is to swinging a baseball bat.

"All of the coaches comment to me on his incredible technique and how smooth it is," Jefferson coach Jack Collis said. "He improved it this year, but it wasn't like there was a long way to go."

And to think it wasn't long ago that Ketterson, a favorite to win individual honors at the Nordic skiing state meet on Thursday, nearly chose basketball over skiing.

As a ninth-grader, Ketterson finished third in the pursuit at last year’s state meet. A year and a half earlier, he was trying to decide between basketball and skiing.

"I skied in seventh grade but in the summer of my eighth-grade year, I was trying to decide between basketball and skiing," Ketterson said. "I really wanted to play basketball because it was cool and a popular sport. My parents told me to ski instead. I wasn't happy about it at the time."

But improvement came quickly and with it, success. As he got better, Ketterson realized that, despite the frequent bouts with pain that are an accepted part of a cross-country skier's life, mom and dad were right.

"If you put in the work, you'll have the success," Ketterson said. "Like running, racing can be uncomfortable and hard. You have to be mentally tough to be able to fight through that, but at the end, there's a weird kind of joy that you find in finishing. You can look back and be proud of yourself."

Like many of the state's top skiers, Ketterson, who finished third in the 2013 state meet at a freshman, trains with local Nordic Skiing guru Piotr Bednarski on the Loppet Nordic Racing Team. He gave up on cross-country running and track teams to focus on skiing.

Under Bednarski's guidance, Ketterson has honed natural abilities and perfected his technique. His career path has taken an upward curve.

"I've always been good at picking up on things that can help me improve," Ketterson said. "Piotr can point out something I'm doing on tape and I can go out and do it."

With national and international competition beckoning, he spent much of January skiing at the U.S. Junior Nationals in Soldier Hollow, Utah. The state meet at Giants Ridge in Biwabik represents one of a dwindling number of opportunities to see Ketterson in a high school setting.

"One of the problems with his success is that, in order to qualify for the international races, we'll see less and less of him," Collis said.

Harrison agrees, stating that high school skiing, while enjoyable, has its limits.

"We don't put our focus on high school races," Harrison said. "Our biggest races are the Junior National Qualifiers. High school is fun, but our focus is on the JNQs."

Despite his success and the possibilities that go with it, Ketterson doesn't anticipate a day when he would completely give up high school skiing, no matter how far he advances.

"I've missed a lot of conference and smaller races for national races," he said. "I'm fine with that. But the state high school meet is one meet I would never miss. That's a big one."

Jim Paulsen • 612-673-7737