Film on Bobcats, college and Adirondack Park to debut in Utah
By James M. Odato
Tim Ranzetta, a California entrepreneur with a home near Paul Smith’s College, has a nose for investing.
So, when he visited the college’s Visitor’s Interpretive Center one day a couple of years ago and saw the headline in a newspaper saying Paul Smith’s’ Nordic ski team won the national championship, he knew he needed to meet the coach.
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That meeting with coach Matt Dougherty ultimately led to the making of a documentary soon to debut. It tells a David-and-Goliath story of a tiny four-year college in the Adirondacks taking it to bigger schools and winning it all.
“Coach Matt and the Outdoor ‘Cats,” tracks the ups and downs of the 2024 season, which starts with the 90-Miler canoe competition when the ski team jells and breaks records. It moves through the training and struggles of college athletes, to the drama of cross-country ski competitions at Olympic facilities.
The nearly two-hour documentary is set solely in the Adirondack Park.
The film, which heaps attention on Paul Smith’s, arrives at an opportune time as the school pursues enrollees, recruits board members and donors, and seeks national recognition. “You’re following the triumphs and the challenges,” said Paul Smith’s College President Dan Kelting, who had a private viewing. “I got misty-eyed.”
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Ranzetta, 57, who travels to his retreat on Spitfire Lake as often as time allows, runs a Palo Alto, California nonprofit that promotes and provides personal finance education in middle and high schools around the country.
“The movie does a lot to show the school at its best, the way the college looks and the type of students it attracts … to a much wider audience,” Ranzetta said. “This documentary can help broaden the folks who are aware of it.”
He hired Bob Jury, a moviemaker who has created videos for Ranzetta’s nonprofit, Next Gen Personal Finance, to direct and produce the Paul Smith’s documentary.
Jury and his film crew from Adrenaline Films in Orlando, Florida spent more than a year following the Bobcats Nordic ski team from the campus to the waterways, to ski jumping in Lake Placid and to national finals at the cross-country skiing course of Mount Van Hoevenberg.
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“It’s working in complete reverse on what you would do with a scripted story,” said Jury, who edited dozens of hours of footage. “It became pretty clear what they were doing in your neck of the woods was pretty unique. … It’s a very tiny school but they are just a powerhouse in Nordic skiing, biathlon and marathon canoe.”
The crew had never been to the Adirondack Park and were enthralled. “Spectacular,” Jury, 55, of Iowa, said. “Most people in the United States have heard of the Adirondacks, but there are a lot of people who live outside the Northeast who have never been there. … It’s just enormous; I didn’t realize how big it was.”
Featured in the film is Coach Matt. Dougherty is a 1997 graduate of Saranac Lake High School and was an elite athlete (his team won the 1995 cross-country running state championships) before he started coaching.
A graduate of Houghton College with a master’s in education from St. Lawrence University, he coached his specialty sports — track and field — at schools in Western New York and Virginia before coming home and taking the job with the Paul Smith’s Nordic team. He figured it would be four a couple of years. That was more than six seasons ago.
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“I’m here permanently, I guess,” said Dougherty, who now is married with three kids.
The film also follows two prominent ‘Cats from the Nordic ski team, Aiden Ripp of Cloquet, Minnesota, and Dolcie Tanguay, of Kent, Maine, leaders and top performers. They became national individual and team champions.
The debut of the film is scheduled for Dec. 29 in Heber Valley, Utah. It will be shown at the Ideal Theater on the weekend of the U.S. Biathlon Youth and Junior Nationals & International Team Trials. Dougherty will be there recruiting.
A free showing of the film — and the local premiere — is scheduled for 5 p.m., Feb. 8., at the Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake during village’s Winter Carnival. The event will serve as a welcome home for the Bobcats following the FISU World University Games in Torino, Italy.
Ranzetta, who built his wealth from a document shredding business he started, said he benefited from great high school and college coaches and their lessons stuck. “This is paying it forward,” he said.
He hopes to get the film distributed and shown at festivals. He is also considering creating a trailer for guidance counselors introducing high school students to colleges.
Kelting said the film alone isn’t getting the Paul Smith’s name out. His staff mailed 100,000 promotional materials to high school students nationwide in recent months. A quarter of recipients have followed up with inquiries. If tradition holds, at least 250 of them will make deposits to come to the only four-year college in the Adirondacks this fall, he said.
Plus, the school rolled out a “summit” scholarship program in which 50 students from the North Country — youths who were unlikely to attend college if not for Paul Smith’s reaching out with a lucrative offer — get their college costs picked up by donors. The package, a total commitment of $2 million over four years, was underwritten by about two dozen donors.
As a result, Kelting expects at least 300 new students to arrive. Total enrollment should hit 750 in the fall, he said, up from fewer than 600 in 2024.
The school plans to fill three or four vacant board seats in 2025, Kelting said.
Top photo: Aiden Ripp clears the archway at the Mount Van Hoevenberg course in March 2024. Photo Courtesy of Matt Dougherty
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