Junior Olympics

CSU Juniors that traveled to Presque Isle for JOs had a great week of skiing, California sun and rocking results!  Some photos below provided by Alex Jospe, who went along as one of the coaches. Rob's summary of the week's results:
Alex's write up of JOs and photos can be seen HERE.

At Junior Olympics (Junior National championships) last week in Presque Isle, CSU Juniors scored enough points to rank CSU as the 3rd best club in the US!  Wow, we should be very proud of them.  We were ahead of the Stratton Mtn School for example.  Alaska Winter Stars were first - they had 21 athletes at JO's and we had only 7.

- Corey Stock won 3 individual National Championships (out of 3 possible) and anchored the winning relay team.
- Eli Hoenig had a 2nd, 4th, 6th, and was on the winning relay team.
- Jackson Rich had a 2nd and other good races.
- Chris Stock was on the 5th place relay team and had solid races.
- Hamish McEwen got an 11th, 13th, and 23rd and a blistering relay leg
- Hannah Smith had 3 solid races in the top half of the field.
- Cate Brams also had 3 solid races in the top half of the field.

These are some great kids and we old folks should be very proud of your fellow Weston skiers.  Our ski racing community provides a fertile environment for producing great ski racers.

Bravo to them!

Rob

Corey the Fashionista!  

Cate waxing in the California sun

Hamish

Coach Bradlee enjoying the sun

Rob's reports follow:

What a day!  The best ever for NE and for CSU ever.

Hannah had an excellent race and was 39th - just 6 seconds out of qualifying for heats.  Cate was just 1.5 seconds out of qualifying.   Competition at JO's is very tough and every second counts.  Both girls skied great races. 

Chris Stock dominated his quarterfinal, but crashed in the semi.  He then set his sights on winning the B final, but crashed in the B final too!   Too bad because he was skiing really well.

Jackson skied beautifully in every heat and took a commanding silver way ahead of bronze.

Eli was on fire with the most amazing tempo and he exceeded all his expectations by getting silver.  He beat Jack Hegman for the first time in the process.  He was the only NE podium for J2 boys.

Hamish did great in his semi-final, but was toasted for his semi.  However, he rallied for the B final to overtake and pass a skier near the end to claim 11th.  I think Hamish is particularly enjoying hanging out with the OJ men who are big, strong, fast, friendly and great role models for a developing J2.  

For J2 girls Corey moved through quarter and semi easily. She had lost both finals in the the Eastern Cup qualifiers to Heather Mooney.  We talked about a new strategy for this final and Corey executed it perfectly.  She put the hammer down on the final uphill and came into the stadium with a big lead and cruised to victory.  Fantastic!

Alex and I are having a great time.  She's an age group coach for the J2 girls and I'm an age group coach for J1/OJ boys.  (Although they are not boys, but young men - big and strong!).   I had a blast today being one of the coaches working the start/finish lines.  The heats ran from noon till 5 PM with one every 5 minutes with just one 10 minute break in the middle.  Whew.  Sure beats living in the wax room the whole day.  For a change I got to see the CSU racers in action and they rewarded me with fantastic performances. 

Can't wait till Wednesday!

Despite the spread out schedule I've been going non-stop with driving the J1/OJ boys around in the van, skiing with them,  waxing their skis, giving them feeds during the race (I was on the TV pictures!), and taking them to pick up their many awards.  What a great group of young men.

Team NE has been totally dominating the event.  In the first race we took 13 out of 18 medals (3 to CSU!!!).  Yesterday was a little more fair as we only took 6 (1 CSU!).

The skiing yesterday was textbook NE spring skiing with great tracks, lots of sunshine, and good klister wax.  I helped wax for a couple of hours in the morning, drove down to the hotel to get my van load of real men, and then went back to waxing.  I gave feeds to the guys during their race, snuck in a half hour of skiing myself, and then helped with clean up.  We had a big awards ceremony last night and an ice cream social.

Corey skied a very smart race, catching her main rival who had started 15 second ahead, and then just hanging with her to the end for another National championship.  She is becoming a very accomplished competitor.

Eli's race was a war.  He was just 7 second out of first and that put him in fourth!  Jack Hegman was 0.6 seconds out of first to get second.  That is tough racing.  Hamish had another excellent race with a 13th.  His results are the best of any CSU first year J2 boy at JO's.  What will happen next year?

Cate Brams tied for 31st, just 15 seconds out of the top 20, and only 12% out of first.  Excellent results for a first year J2.  She has skied two very solid races with no mistakes.

Hannah Smith improved her results with a 30th in J2 girls.  Hannah too has been skiing very consistently with a calm and focused demeanor.  It's great to see how she has progressed since last year.

Jackson, perhaps a bit tired from his blistering sprint race, still skied a very solid 15K.  Always tough to be a first year, but he is skiing like a pro.

Chris Stock did everything right in his race, but didn't ski as fast as he wanted.  Sometimes that happens.  Again, I think that making it all the way through the sprint rounds is incredibly tiring - worse than a marathon really.

The weather here is wonderful - sunny, dry, cold at night, warm during the day.  Still enough snow for great skiing.

Gotta go skiing now - life is tough!

It's 2 AM (new time),  Tim Caldwell is sleeping soundly in the next bed, and I'm done with my last coaching task - making sure that all the athletes are in their assigned rooms and not wandering around the hotel.

At tonight's awards ceremony they announced the winners in the club competition.  Racers score points for top finishes and USSA registered clubs are ranked by total points.  For the boys competition CSU came out 3rd, and for the combined boys and girls CSU was also 3rd. Wow!  So, we are the 3rd ranked club in the USA.  I could not be more proud of our athletes, especially since this is a team award and everyone contributed.  Bravo to our club.  By the way, the Alaska Winter Stars that won the content sent 3 times as many athletes as we did.

Today in the Relay race Corey Stock skied a fantastic anchor leg to win the J2 race.  Eli Hoenig skied an excellent number 2 leg to secure the win for the J2 boys.  Chris Stock hit the podium on the 5th place OJ boys team.  And CSUer Olga Golovkina did the same for the girls.   Hamish McEwen also snagged 5th with his team.   Wow.

I hate to have to say this, but the weather today remained perfect with our 8th day of sunshine.  Come up to the County for great weather and skiing.

Hamish