First Eastern Cup Weekend

Finals Week, First Eastern Cup at Craftsbury and Winter Break!!

           

Finally after a grueling week of exams about half of the team trekked over to Craftsbury, VT for the Eastern Cup opener. Training during exam week is usually not optimal making racing right after pretty tough. Saturday was a classic race and Sunday was a skate pursuit start race based on Saturday’s finishes. If anyone has pictures of the races, feel free to send them over to us!

But here are some results!!

Find RESULTS for both days here: https://www.nensa.net/results/

Saturday Women 5k Classic
Saturday Men 10k Classic

Sunday 10k Women Skate
Sunday 10k Men Skate

Impressive finishes by all considering the stresses of exam week! Here's what Coach Etown had to say about the weekend:

"I must say the opening Eastern cups gave us much to be excited about especially on the Women’s side.  While it is a little unclear due to confusing results being posted, here is my take.

Lucy finished 8^th  in the pursuit moving up from an already impressive 17^th in classic race, very competitive with the top women in the EISA.

Jackie placed 22^nd! Moving up from 61^st!

Dana had perhaps her best race in a couple of years finishing 43^rd on day one in the classic and moving up a couple places in the freestyle!

Kate, Dani, and Erin also improved their finish dramatically over the first day by about 25-30 places in a very solid field of competitors.

Only Matt and Calvin racing for the men which is fine, both I'm sure would have liked to have done better but it was a reasonable early season result."

For now, everyone will be training on their own for the holidays and getting recovered and fired up for carnival season.

In other news, freshmen Ryan Young just came out with his 2016 SLU SKI Thanksgiving Camp edit: SLU SKIING HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2016

Check it out here!!

Here is another sweet video from Ruben Castren skiing out west!

Be sure to check out previous Assistant Coach's video featuring a few SLU skiers here!

Also, feel free to visit our team website with our new headshots- looking spiffy team!

Next up:

After break in January, some of the team will be going to the NYSSRA JNQ races at Gore, Mt. and then they will be driving up to meet the rest of the team for our winter training camp at Mont Saint Anne!!

--Calvin

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! See you Next Year!!
-SLUSKI

Check back soon...

Check back later for updates from our last week of school, weekend skiing at Mt. VanHovenberg in Lake Placid, and the NYSEF opener race!

We are all very busy finishing up our school work and studying for finals!

Thanks for your patience at this time...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Lucy '20 edging out Elizabeth Izzo, to win the NYSEF opener race today!

Thanksgiving Camp Continued!

From Emily's Perspective:

Hi All,

            My name is Emily Siegel. I am a freshman on the team this year. I come from a small town in the west called Sun Valley in Idaho and raced for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation since I was in the 2^nd grade.

Skiing up the hill at Foret

Last week we went up to Foret ("4A") near Quebec to ski on snow for the first time this year.  At the venue, there is a 2.5 km trail made up of snow that they have stored underneath wood chips all summer long from last year. Considering the lack of snow on the ground when we got there on Saturday, they had a fantastic trail open and no bare spots on the 2.5 km course. Most of the other teams we race against throughout the year were also training there last week. The other teams that showed up and we raced against were Middlebury, Bates, Colby, UVM and Bowdoin. I was super excited because it was a chance to see friends we haven’t seen in awhile from other teams. Most of the days we would wake up at 6:45am to go for a walk/ run to wake up our bodies. We would then get in the car and drive the 40 minutes to the trail head. We would normally ski for 2 hours in the morning, then break for lunch, and go out again in the afternoon. We also got to do many different things when we weren’t skiing. We did a strength workout where Dana and Lucy were so strong that they broke the medicine ball.  

Our house on the hill (Photo: Dana)

We also got to spend a night in Quebec where we played laser tag. We were put into three teams and then were given 20 minutes to go around and shoot one another with lasers. It was a lot of fun and lots of running around (I think Ethan and Liz were trying to sneak in a third workout of the day)! The winner of the laser tag was Erin "Evin"! 

The next day was Thanksgiving and we got to go skiing in the morning for two hours then away we went, back down the hill to the house, to start cooking the food. While a lot of us were cooking the food, some of the boys decided to join a pickup game that the Middlebury and Bates team started, in order for them to be more American while in Canada.

Thanksgiving meal! Yum!                 (Photos: Dana)

Thanksgiving Meal all spread out and ready to devour! (Photo: Dana)

Dani '20 and Emily '20 (Me!) in the kitchen! (Photo: Dana)

We skied again on Friday in the morning and went home in the afternoon to rest again before the time trial.  

  

 Dustin '19 smiling his way through a workout (Photo: Dana)

Foret was beautiful! (Photo: Dana)

Jackie '20 cruising around the loop (Photo: Dana)

Ryan '20 GoPro on head (Photo: Dana)

At the end of the week on Saturday, we did two laps of the 2.5 km loop and the boys did 3 laps of the loop for a time trial against all the other teams that were there. Both our girls and guys team looked really strong and it was fun to get a bib on before we actually start racing come December 17^th.  We went home, back to school, that night after the time trial.  It is nice to be back on campus but it made me really excited for all the races and more opportunity we have to ski coming up.

            -Emily