It’s been a long week for all the athletes with many finishing up their last final yesterday but the Eastern Cup openers are at Trapp’s this weekend so it’s tough to pass up the quality racing opportunity.  The snow was a little thin early in the week so I joined a few people to help the crew up at Trapp’s shovel snow on Friday knowing that the more work we did, the harder it would snow Friday night.  Mother nature came through and dropped a foot of fresh snow on the trails and Bill Henchey and company had a good sprint course buffed out for us this morning.  It was only a kilometer but finished with a long gradual hill that put everyone in difficulty.  Jennie proved to be the strongest of the women on the hill and cruised through the heats to the A final.  In the A final she started the hill in 5th but over-powered Dartmouth’s Sophie Caldwell and Ida Sargent on the final hill and powered away for the win.  Caitlin, Johanna, and Mary all skied well and qualified for the heats with Caitlin skiing through to the B final and a 10th place finish.  For Mary I think it was probably her highest finish in an Eastern Cup and for Johanna it was a good start in her first Eastern Cup.  Laura just missed qualifying for the heats by a few seconds.

Jennie cruising in one of her heats. (photo credit flyingpointroad.com)

Juergen had the fastest time in qualifying as five men qualified for the heats.  Ryan qualified 4th, Chris 10th, Franz 11th, and Alex 18th.  They skied really tough in the heats with all five advancing to either the A or B final.  Juergen lead the charge finishing second behind Dave Chamberlain.  Franz ended the day 6th and Alex, Ryan, and Chris ended the day in 9th, 10th, and 11th in the B final.

It was a good first day of serious racing for the team.  For the coaching staff it was a pretty easy first day with cold temps which kept the kick waxing pretty straightforward.  Our skis were good, maybe not the fastest as we didn’t pull out all the stops for glide waxing but we were strong on the uphill which was the difference maker in the heats.

Thank you to the Howes, Horsts, Walshs, Benders and Rachael for making sure we had ample food to munch on between heats.  Sprint days can be long, especially when you have a ton of people moving through the heats so the extra support is much appreciated!  Thanks again to Rachael for leaving early to get dinner ready so we all could come home to a good meal after a long day.

You can find results and some pictures at NENSA.net.  I’ll have more photos posted to Picasa in the coming days…. for now it’s off to bed for me and all the athletes as we have a 5k and 10k Freestyle on tap for tomorrow morning and it’s going to be snowing again!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.