Season nearing its end

Well I really didn't want to write to much about Dartmouth. This isn't very fair to the women's team however since their season has gone pretty well so far. Unfortunately for those that pay attention the men's team had, for lack of a kinder way of putting it, an embarrassing day on Friday last week and really only an okay day on Saturday. For us to be tenth says this for sure. The EISA is a very talented league. This year as compared to even a couple years ago, no team is fielding racers who don't know how to ski. It used to be that toward the back of the field there was always a few who were really just beginners, not anymore. While I am not sure that the top of the field (top 5-10) is significantly more competitive on a National level it certainly is the case that even through the top 30 or 40 racers in both the men's and women's field there are very well prepared and skilled athletes. This is probably in large part due to the hard work of so many junior racing programs that have started and expanded in the past 10 years or so.
Well anyway enough on that. The guys are certainly looking forward to tomorrow and trying to put last Friday behind us, way behind us.

Back to the women, we had a great Valentines day driving down to Bennington, Kalie provided the music. I think our goal tomorrow would be 5th or better as a team and to put someone in the top 10 which we haven't done on the women's side this year. Last week on Saturday saw a breakthrough performance for Johannah with 24th place and Kalie after suffering a rather harsh crash just 1/2K in moved up from last place to 22nd on one of the most difficult courses you will see, Oak Hill did not disappoint. Kristen was in the top 20 (12/18) both days and Robin is still having her best season yet in her senior year.

UVM weekend and looking toward Dartmouth

Given how things have been going this was a reasonably successful weekend. Ben Knowles posted the best individual classic result in my tenure as head coach thus far with a 5th place. I wish could have seen the finish as he had to outsprint Patrick OBrien from Dartmouth in the final stretch. I was watching on the final uphill about .25K from the finish. The women continued to post solid results and Kalie had perhaps her best classic race result of her career with a 15th place finish. The sprints went about how sprints tend to go for us, not great but they are sprints so whatever. Not to say I wouldn't like to do well but I would rather see the team do well in the distance events. Isaac qualified 8th which was quite impressive, he is now on his yearly shot of antibiotics for a bacterial sinus infection that finally got diagnosed on Friday, hoping he can kick that out of his system and start posting the results that would reflect the level of effort he put into his dryland training this summer and fall over the second half of the season. Kalie and Kristen also qualified which was a solid showing.
After the sprint races I headed over to Old Forge with Bryan and Sophie to meet up with rest of the team that wasn't on the roster for the UVM carnival. It was a good time, not a lot of competition but they all did well enough to earn a spot on the Mid A team for Junior Nationals should they decide to go.
Dartmouth races are being held at Trapps again 5th year in a row now, kind of a bummer for Dartmouth but it doesn't really matter so much to me.
The competition for the very few NCAA spots is going to come down to the wire for certain, this weekend will be really big for that.