Season wrap up

I felt like I should post something new even though I don't really have anything to exciting to put up. We had several teammates at Junior Nationals in Anchorage some good results for a few of them, nothing extraordinary though. Everyone else is pretty much done racing aside from any random spring citizen races they may go to. The Spring Fling at Craftsbury was a great time.

We are on spring break right now and still have some great skiing at school which is a treat for this time of year. After break we will sit down and start looking at training plans for next year.

I just got back from helping out the New York team at Eastern High School Championships which was tiring but fun and well worth it. It is quite impressive to see how many great skiers there are in the east, sure the field was not nearly as competitive given the overlap with Junior Nationals but still some very exciting racing and talented athletes.

It was also great fun to see how many of my former athletes and teammates were involved in coaching these skiers. Nearly the entire Vermont staff are SLUSKI members graduating over the past 3 years. Knut was helping out with the Massachusetts team and Jeremy Nellis who was on the team in 98 and 99 (fairly sure on those dates) was one of the coaches for Maine (currently Head Coach at Gould).

Things will slow down a bit for me over the next month as I am going have surgery on my feet this coming Thursday. It will not be fun but after recovery it should help a great deal and get me back running more again.

No NCAAs

Well no NCAA trip for anyone. However the regional championships was our best weekend of the season. Even so it is taking me quite a while to process and come to terms with the fact that we simply were not as good this season as both we and many others expected us to be. Last season was a bit of a surprise and was really the kind of success that I thought we would have this season. Back 4 or 5 years ago the results we had this season would have been considered okay.
At any rate my expectations looking forward are high. I believe we have athletes on both the women's and men's teams who can consistently place in the top 5 and even win races in the EISA and that we are deep enough so that on off days we place maybe 5th as a team. I fully believe we can win, and that we should be highly competitive within the EISA and always qualify for NCAAs. I am not going to expect any less.

To close out the race season we have five going to Junior Nationals on the Mid Atlantic team. Sophie Allen, Arla Casselman, Hannah James, Johannah Ludington, and Bryan Pepper. Thankfully we have had great ski conditions at Higley all week, capping it off with a time trial today. It was great to have many others on the team who are not going to Junior Nationals in the time trial. I was especially pleased to have our seniors out there since I can really understand the temptation to just call it over.
I think we will have a good group going over to the Craftsbury Spring Fling next Saturday. I haven't done this race in a few years, its a great event and I am looking forward to it as our last organized team activity for the season.