Etown's report after NCAAs

It was quite a week a tremendous amount of time and effort was put into making these races really excellent. Trapp Family Lodge and UVM deserve a big thumbs up. No doubt all that rain on Friday sucked, I was shivering cold after Leah's race and actually somewhat glad we didn't have any guys skis to get ready.

The 5K free was one of Leah's best races of the season, finishing 17th overall. I really think her best event right now would be a long freestyle race. This was the best NCAA championship finish by a woman on the team since 2001.

For the 15K Classic I wouldn't really call the waxing tricky anymore than klister ever is. We certainly had options I was happy with. Adams rundown of the race is an excellent read but my thoughts are we like everyone were between zeros and a klister combo. The trouble with zeros is that they were really designed for falling snow near freezing. It was quite far from that and so it was suprising they felt so good. In the end it is more about how well the skis are matched and since Leah does not own her own pair specifically matched to her she just wasn't confident that they would work well the whole race. The skis she went on were a bit slow and we had been struggling with this most of the season. Either I am just not waxing them right or they just aren't a good match. From what I could tell it was a mix of zeros and klister skis out there so either choice was successful. Anyway, really proud she hung in there and made up time where she could. I have seen athletes often just check out in these cases but Leah didn't and that was great.

On the Alpine side Ashley-Kate Durham got the SLU flag on the podium with an awesome 3rd place finish in the Slalom race on Saturday. She was the top eastern finisher and moved up from 9th on the first run. http://www.eisaskiing.org/BART/Results11/ncaa11.htm