J2 Championships!

I'm weeks late getting pictures and results out on J2s and Eastern HS championships, but here they are.

J2s this year were at the Holderness School and we had 3 days of the most delightful, sunshine-filled weather imaginable! The courses at Holderness were excellent and CSUers had some excellent results. The top results for CSU started with Friday's 5km skate Hannah Smith skied a very strong race to come home in 2nd with Nadja Kern not far behind in 7th. On the boys side, Neil Garrison had a very good race, finishing in 3rd, only 2 sec. out of first while Rion O'Grady had an excellent 21st place finish.

Saturday morning was the 5km classic race, held under rapidly changing conditions. Hannah Smith again skied a strong race to take 4th while Neil Garrison come home in 7th. The afternoon race was the skate sprint held in tough conditions, nice slushy corn snow. Hannah finished in 5th and Nadja just out of the top 10 in 11th while Neil finished in 5th as well, again less than 7 sec. out of first in another close fought race. Ellen Goldberg popped a good one as well, moving up 23 places compared to the skate race while Erik Brote moved up 8 spots.

Sunday was the relay. The first Massachusetts team finished very well in 3rd place. Neil Garrison led off, tagging Hannah Smith. Hannah skied very well to move the team up before she handed off to Luke Costley and the skate leg. Luke tagged Nadja Kern who came home in 3rd. Another notable performance for the day was Erik Brote who had an excellent first leg on his team.

Massachusetts finished in 4th place, but with a very young team. Lots of fun was had and I'm hopeful we can move up to 3rd place next year!