NCAA Championships

It was really great to be back at the NCAA championships.  To have Kristen race so well all season except for one weekend was one of the most satisfying experiences of my coaching career.  Early on during November and December she was not racing nearly as well as she was once the carnival season hit.  I think its a great example of having some faith in the training and your own plan which she executed perfectly from the spring straight through the entire season.  I think the only thing we would have liked to have at the end was some top 30 finishes at NCAAs but she finished just outside of that goal in both races.  Even so this was a treamendous success and she proved she could race with the best college racers in the country at was is arguably the most talented field of racers you are going to see outside of US Nationals and perhaps some supertour races.

Our overall team score at the championships was certainly boosted by the GS win of Lindsay Cone and her 9th place finish in the Slalom.  James Anderson didn't have great races but simply having three athletes contributing to the team score was awesome.  It was great spending some time with the piners, we introduced them to the Nordic team staple Shepherd's Pie.

It looks like the East faired well in the Nordic events and we should see a spot or two possibly come back to our quota for both the men and women which is encouraging.

Kristen qualifies for NCAA championships

Well it was down to the wire as always but due to very consistent racing all season long it was really up to the other women in the league to bump Kristen out of qualification.  Over the weekend at regional championships she dropped only one spot and qualified 10th out of 12 finishing 12th on the all east list.  The goals for NCAAs are a top twenty finish although we would be happy by simply finishing higher than her seed position in both races.  Weather looks sort of warm next week for Rumford but its certainly cold right now.  Unfortunately that last snowstorm missed us so while the rest of the East is enjoying excellent skiing right now we have a solid sheet of ungroomable ice.  No matter we will give Gatineau a try on Thursday and be out of here for the weekend and NCAA championships by Friday.  Some on the team are excited to race the 30K freestyle spring fling at Craftsbury on Saturday which we have done over the past few years, myself included.  

As a team the regional championships went okay for both men and women.  Caroline continued to improve all season and won out in a sprint finish to take 20th place in the freestyle 15K on Saturday.  The men after an extremly difficult but I would say somewhat salvaged day on Friday raced very well in the 20K free or at least better than the past couple of weekends although not the same form as we started with.  It was great to see Wolcott mixing it up with the top guys through 10K although a hard crash coming around for the third lap knocked him out of contention.  At the very least I can certainly say with only one graduate, Kristen Bednar, the team looks very strong for next season.

I will try to make some posts from NCAAs next week.