Coach Rosemary starts the Lollipoppers
This past Saturday, 22 MNC BKLers joined skiers from Frost Mountain Nordic, Sleepy Hollow BKL and Mad River BKL for our first ever NWVT BKL Mini-Fest at Sleepy Hollow Ski Center. It turned out to be quite a fun and festive event with individual start races for all age groups and a self-guided mini-marathon that kids could do with their parents/caregivers. An Eli-Enman designed terrain park, a few jumps in the woods, announcing by our own Dave Priganc , and tutu-clad Juniors Hanna Holm & Emma Page leading out each age class all added to the festive atmosphere.
Hanna leads out the 1/2 race.
Lollipoppers Bella Altadonna and Ollie Labor both skied the race and received a special maple lollipop for their efforts.
Ollie is totally psyched for that Maple leaf lollipop!
Racers in the 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 & 7/8 races received “Whittles” handmade by NENSA Program Director & Mad River BKL Leader Justin Beckwith and his wife, Brie Pike-Springer. These will make great holiday ornaments when the kids get tired of hanging them in their rooms!
In the Grades 1&2 race, MNC had speedy skiers Oliver Tremble, Mazzy Merrit, Finn Laber and Hazel Deane. These skiers all skated the 1km race (it was “freestyle” technique) and most of them just learned to skate this year. What an awesome job they did!
In the Grades 3/4 race, Liam Vile, Oakley Crawford and Ansel Sprague all skied the 2km course, while Fiona Repp and Ellery Mitchell ripped it up for the girls. The race ended over some twisty “whale bumps” and all these guys skied them with flying colors.
It was an all-girl crew for MNC in the Grades 5/6 race and Kate Carlson, Pearl Page, Ryley Morigeau, Brooke Greenberg, Tessa Diller and Hazel Fasching proved that MNC can really hold its own in this age group. It is no surprise that they took six of the top eight spots! Wow!
The Grade 7/8 Race is always very competitive at the New England Festival and this theme rang true for our Mini-Festival as well. There were 31 skiers in the race, 15 boys and 16 girls and some very fast times. For MNC, 7th graders Jonah Gorman and Pippa Diller did an excellent job in their races, giving the 8th graders some stiff competition. For 8th graders Evey Slavik, Brady Morigeau, Niko Cuneo and Liam Repp, this was the last BKL race of their careers. The last festival is always a bit bitter-sweet for an 8th grader. BKL & the festivals are so much fun that it’s sad to be moving on. But it’s exciting to look forward to becoming an MNC Junior and going on to racing in high school and in the Eastern Cup series. Niko and Brady have been racing together for years, have often been relay partners and it was fun to watch them battle it out again in this year’s Mini-Fest. Liam just started racing this year, but has been getting faster and faster. Evey deserves a special shout-out: She just joined Arctic Foxes and started skiing this year. She liked it so much, she decided to try racing and she skied impressively well in this race! I am sure all four of our 8th graders will continue their skiing in high school in one form or another. I hope they have a great time and I can’t wait to see what they do!
All the photos above were taken by photographer John Lazenby and below is a link to more that he posted on his website. There are some excellent photos of MNC skiers, so be sure to check it out! John is also going to put the photos on SmugMug soon so that you may purchase photos of the event. I will post a link when he does.
Photos by John Lazenby
NWVT BKL Mini-Fest Race Results
