This is super duper late, but Jamie and i have been remiss in writing up the J2 championships. March 9-11, Maddy, Jamie and I headed back to beautiful Rumford, ME, to meet up with the rest of the coaches and 40 J2s from all over Massachusetts. Since this is the CSU blog, I am going to highlight the CSU skiers, but we were the Massachusetts team that weekend, and the skiers all appeared to be having a great time together hanging out and skiing fast!
Things were starting to soften up "nicely", as Weston ski track would say, for the skate race on Friday afternoon. The snow quickly moved beyond the "nice" stage and into the "sloppy" stage before the race, and there were definitely some body-sized pits on the corners of the downhills! Our skiers got through the tough conditions without so much as batting an eyelid, and posted some great results! I'm not going to list everyone's results - you can look them up here for boys, and girls. But I will point out some highlights!
Lewis had a break-out race on Friday's skate race, placing 7th! I think he surprised even himself. Sonya also had a great race, leading the MA team in 10th, in her first regional ski race! Very exciting. Friday night we had a dinner at the Linnell Motel, a fine establishment whose reputation sets it up to be far worse than you think upon arrival, and Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, ready for a klisterfest! Our skiers did great again, the boys led by Chris K in 2nd, and Jacob in 21st, skiing very smoothly. Meg led the CSU ladies in 20th place, back in fighting form after some disappointing crashes the day before, and Mary also had a really solid race. Saturday afternoon we had a sprint race, and the course was pretty short and flat. This doesn't make it easy, since you have to push that much harder, but that was when we discovered that Nick Reitman can sprint like you wouldn't believe. Holy cow! 3rd place! Raffi also had a good race, showing that he can sprint really well, finishing in 12th, but Chris K went and won the thing! Very impressive CSU boys work. For the girls, Sonya had another great race, finishing 11th, and Claire and Phoebe both had break-out races as well, finishing in the top 60! I think Phoebe completely surprised herself how fast she skied!
Boys classic, girls' classic results, boy's sprint results, girls' sprint results.
Sunday was the relay, and everyone was excited for it. The weather continued to be beautiful (for spectating… not so much for skiing), and the relays were fast and furious. MA team 1 took the lead from the gun, led out by Chris K, and unfortunately, about 400m into the course, you had to make a 90 degree left hand corner, and the NH kid in second place just behind Chris crossed his skis and fell down, taking out much of the pack and all of our other teams. Wahooo mass starts!
Chris held the lead through that leg, and our other teams moved up valiantly, skiing really well. In the end, the MA first team was beaten out in a spring, by a team from CXC, so that doesn't really count, since they're not only not from the east, but their team consists of THREE states, not one! Our other teams skied great - the second MA team was 10th! and everyone out there was fighting for every place, and there is nothing that makes a coach prouder than seeing her skiers go with such gusto.
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