Monday, February 28, 2011

Leah Hart on the road to the final 39

Sorry for the lack of a blog post last week, just getting tired toward the season end. We wrapped up the carnival season with an okay weekend at Bates. What an appropriate location for our seniors to finish out their collegiate career, Black Mountain in Rumford being the site of so many big and small time races in the skiing lives. We all know it probably to well. The drive over was thankfully broken up by a stay over in Burlington on Thursday night at the Terkos & Carpenters but we were met with a full on blizzard for second half of the trip which ended up taking around 6hours instead of 4. Anyway plenty of snow so can't complain for the end of the season. The best performances on the weekend were had by super senior (grad student) Zach who punched in a season best 11th in the 10K free which opened the possibility of qualification for NCAAs via a top 10 performance in the 20K. He certainly took a shot at it and skied from a late 40s start position in the mass start up to the mid teens before the effort began to take its tole and he dropped back to finish 21st, still nothing to be dissapointed in.
Leah was already solidly in for qualifying prior to the weekend so the goal was really to see if she could take some chances and have some big races and perhaps move up a spot or two on the rankings. Unfortunately we will have to wait until next week to see her best stuff as the freestyle went well but just out of the top 10 at 13th and taking some chances in the mass start led to tripping up and leaving the stadium in last place. It was very impressive to see her already back up in the top 20 by 5K in but she was only able to hold there for the rest of the race. Anyway I am pretty excited to see how she will fare at Nationals in Stowe after a little rest.
A big thank you to the parents for all their support again this season, the post race food has been excellent and as always a great help. To Steve, Sophie, Kyle, and Zach thanks for all your hard work positive attitudes.

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