New Year, New Events

Okay, so it's been a little while, and honestly, not a lot has been going on. Last update was after the last Eastern Cup in December, and since then there have been only a handful of races. Three NHIAA Nordic, three jumps, and another Eastern Cup have occupied the past 4 weeks. Those, and a lot of facility maintenance.

At Kennett, we own no fancy grooming machine to maintain our ski jump. No snowmaking, no Piston Bully, nothing but our own two feet and skis. So this ^^ is what we do to keep it intact. The above is the K20 meter jump, while the K35 sits, waiting to be done.

Meanwhile, I have been racing. Nothing out of the ordinary on the NHIAA front, two classic races and a skate, all dominated by Kennett Nordic. The first, hosted by us at Whitaker woods, was a close race, with Kennett coming out on top by only 9 points. Next, a Skate at Plymouth High School, we fared a little better, taking the win by a whopping 25 points.

Behold, the elusive creature Benson Yeti in its natural habitat: the nordic race.

Then, at Great Glen, it was cold. And I mean very cold. Like 3 layers and a buff cold.

Yeah, that cold.

It was a small meet, which we came within 3.5 points of winning with a perfect score. We won by 11 points, while I took home top honors (as with all the other races) by a considerable margin.

And now for the Nordic Combined portion of the post, the Jumping section. There have been three meets since the beginning of the New Year. And Kennett has not won a single one. There has been a meet at Proctor Academy, Lebanon, and on the Kanc, all of which I have been steadily improving, 

Lebanon's K25

Our precious jumps (K35, K20)

The view from house, last jumper of the night.

At home, I came in 6th overall, with two long jumps of 26m each, short by 4m of the longest on the night.

And finally, an Eastern Cup. 

If you remember my post from the end of last season, Mountain Top Resort was not good to me in the classic discipline. Well, it was time for redemption.

January 12th: Freestyle Sprint. 3 minutes of all-out, individual sprinting on a brand new pair of Yoko 8100 carbon poles (Thank you Nordic Skater!). Initial result: 42nd overall, the #9 J1/OJ That means that I made the Junior Heats at the end of the day. Two more sprints for me! The heats didn't go as well as I had hoped, coming in fifth each time, for a grand place of 11th in the youth. But it was the first time I had ever made heats at an Eastern Cup before!

200m to go, I was in second. 180m later, fifth.

January 13th: Redemption Day. The 9.3km Classic. Last year, during a 4.8 at EHSC, I had a dismal 44th place finish. This year, 54th. But, it was against college skiers this time, and I ended up 12th in my age group. So overall better than before.


As a bonus, on January 6th was the Jackson Jaunt, a 10k self-seed mass-start freestyle on the International Course at Jackson Ski Touring. Against what seemed like all of the Maine College Skiers that didn't go to Nationals, I ended up 15th overall. Not bad for a kid who completely guessed his wax the night before!

And now I rest, preparing for the Geschmossel Classic at Bretton Woods on MLK day.

Ciao.

Early Season and the snow is coming!

So last time there was an update, we were only doing dryland. Well, that has changed. A week after the post, the generous General Manager at Cranmore Mountain Resort let us ski around the base area, a good 1.4km manmade loop. The team has been training there for the past 2 weeks, as we didn't get a decent snowstorm until just recently.

Hannah actually smiling during training!?!

We mostly skated, doing long loops around the base. Traffic got interesting at times, as some of the newer kids hadn't quite gotten the hang of skiing yet.

Eh?

Sean came back from his Sweden trip and skied laps around us for a bit, but everyone liked seeing him again.

An Olympian at work

But, I was only on snow for a week before the first Eastern Cup, which was able to be held thanks to a tremendous effort by the folks at Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Timing was a tad off for the Classic Sprints (it's okay, I'm not a huge fan of them anyways), and Chelsea Little wrote a great article about that here. I came in 117th in the 1.4km sprint, landing me in the top 15 J1's from New England. 

Sunday was a different story. I had done no distance skate training to date aside from rollerskiing in preparation for the 11.25km race, and I was seeded in the middle of a pack of OJ's from Quebec. I managed to slip in behind Jack Hegman from UVM for my first 2 laps (out of 7, and I did count correctly this time), and then behind a Quebequois OJ who started behind me. I held onto both of them, and finished in 70th overall, the #3 J1 for New Hampshire (13th overall including Quebequois, 7th sans Canadians), and ahead of the entire St. Michael's Ski Team. 

Since then, I have been on snow exactly once for nordic training. 

The Eastern Cup was last sunday.

Monday: practice was cancelled due to inclement weather, after having a 2 hour delay at school.

Tuesday was supposed to be our first race: Cancelled due to weather, after another 2 hour delay.

Wednesday: My first Alpine race of the season at King Pine (also my first day on skis), rocked it on tele skis. Ended too late to go to practice.

Thursday: Chip made me go to jumping practice. Stair jumping for an hour wasnt that bad.

Friday: Non-mandatory practice, which was called off, again, due to weather after having a 2 hour delay.

Saturday!: Went skiing for 2 hours at Jackson. Conditions were marginal at best, due to an epic downpour the night before. The International Course was rough. and the Yodel ungroomed. The Ellis River Trail was good, and I'm looking at hitting up Great Glen Trails today.

Snow is in the forecast, so things are looking up. Hopefully conditions all around improve for some good break training.

SNOW!!!!!!!

Season 2012: A preview

My racing season has already begun for the 2012/2013 calendar, with a 7.5km opener at Craftsbury. The race went okay, though Blaine and I skied an extra lap (shhh... we don't talk about that) which essentially ruined our results. But it was snow time, and that's all that matters. But wait, I have bigger news.

Copyright 2012 Mike Sibilia - All Rights Reserved

Aside from that one day, everything else has been dryland. The day after openers we had a club practice that involved hiking up Black Cap in North Conway, where it was snowing at the top, a break from the usual meet & roll that had been the routine since mid-October. But that wasn't big news.

And now, for the grand announcement: This year, the Kennett Nordic Ski Team has the most members it has ever had since the early Broomhall era. Our official rosters say 23 boys and 6 girls, but those don't take into account the 3 skimeister candidates (1 male and 2 female). We have almost our entire team back from our championship season, and the schedule is up on the Calendar page.

Other than that, it has been a very productive off-season. I worked at a Boy Scout Summer Camp again, and then ran Cross Country, where I FINALLY received a non-winter Varsity Letter. With a PR of 17:07 and a 38th place finish at the DII state meet, I got plenty of work in.

And then, the week before DII's, I earned my Eagle Scout rank. After years of hard work, it was finally there. My court of honor was on November 18th (I had to cut my Movember short) with plenty in attendance. I was Troop 150's second Eagle of the year, and the second since 2007. 

Oh, and this happened.

I'll update more as the season goes on, when there's more to actually report on.
Torin