Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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.

No comments: