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BKL Open Skiing & Ski w/ UVM Cats Day

By Rosemary Shea-Cobb on 27 March, 2017 in BKL Training Schedule, Uncategorized

Last week wrapped up our BKL program but we will continue to ski as long as the snow holds out. So:

Tuesday 3/28: Free Skiing at the Range (no organized program). Choose your technique, Rosemary & Adam will be at the Range.

Thursday 3/30: Ski with the UVM Cats Day! The UVM Nordic team will come and ski with us, so a great chance to go for a ski with some fun, fast skiers!

Sunday 4/2: Cochran’s Nordic Cross! Super-fun event that everyone should try out…jumps, berms, slaloms and PANCAKES!

BKL Practice Week of 3/21

By Rosemary Shea-Cobb on 19 March, 2017 in BKL Jackrabbits, BKL Race Blog, BKL Training Schedule, Uncategorized

Tuesday 3/21: It’s Awards Day! Skate Technique! Parents: Bring snacks, I will make the Hot Chocolate. First we’ll play a big game of “Stones”, then we’ll quit for snacks, hot chocolate & awards.

Thursday 3/23: Skate. It will be either “Fun Day” or Ski to the Alpine Hill Day. Either way, it’s going to be fun!

Saturday 3/25: MNC Club Relay at Craftsbury: 4 person relays. Each skier skis 4 or 5 km, 2 people go skate and 2 go classic. Get a team together and register on Ski Reg. by Thursday. Cost is $60 per team for BKL. If you need help finding a team, e-mail Rosemary.

2017 BKL Festival Recap

By Rosemary Shea-Cobb on 7 March, 2017 in BKL Jackrabbits, BKL Race Blog, Uncategorized

Results: Bullet Timing

More Photos: 2017 BKL Fest

Twenty-two MNC skiers skied in the New England Bill Koch Festival at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine this past weekend. This year’s festival had a “Protect Our Winters” super-hero theme. The idea was that you could come, park your car for the weekend at your hotel and ski or walk to all the venue events on Bethels’ interconnected trail system. Unfortunately, with Saturday’s forecasted temps in the single digits and high winds, the event organizers made the wise choice to move the race venue from the open stadium & fields behind the Gould Field House to the more wooded & protected trails at Pine Hill, which is a short ski up the road. In addition, to limit cold exposure to skin, they shortened the races and had the older kids go first when it was coldest.

Saturday dawned on a cold morning as predicted for the skate relays. Skiers and parents bundled up for the cold. The day started with the girls’ 7/8 relays featuring Quincy Massey-Beirman tagging off to Camille Bolduc and Hattie Barker tagging off to Ava Thurston.

Here’s Massey-Beirman-Bolduc tag-off. Notice the matching leg tights! That’s Ava in the background soon to be tagged by Hattie.

Quincy & Camille put on quite a big lead over everyone and finished first! Hattie and Ava did an awesome job too and finished fourth in a very fast field of skiers!

Next came the 7/8 boys in which Aiden Burt was paired with Frost Mountain’s Neil Guy and Jack Christner.

That’s Neil out front in the orange FMN suit just after the start.

Aiden skiing his team into first place!

MNC had seven 5/6 girls racing in the relay and they all proved themselves quite fast!
Virginia scrambled and tagged off to Esther in third place, not far behind the Ford Sayer team. Esther put the pedal to the metal and quickly passed Ford Sayer’s Sarah Gluek and the Cobb-Cuneo duo brought home second, finishing only about 1o seconds behind the EMBK team. Great work girls!

Greta Kilburn teamed up with Carly Trapeni and these 5/6 girls meant business (notice the focus in Carly’s face here). They pulled in an excellent sixth place in the competitive 5/6 field.

Finley Barker has worked hard on her skiing this year (look at that well balanced skate stride!). She anchored to Julia Thurston’s scramble leg and they finished eleventh. Mia Diller teamed up with Frost Mountains’ Marjorie Christner and Mad River’s Caroline Purcell. All skied well and finished in 19th. What an awesome group of 5/6 girls!

Next was the very competitive 5/6 boys race where we had the three-some of Taylor Carlson, Carl Priganc and Jordon Shullenburger. Taylor scrambled and here you see him tagging off to Carl and Jordon who skied like the wind and finished eleventh.

Pippa Diller teamed up with Frost Mountain’s Violet Anderson for the girls’ 3/4 race and pulled in a seventh. I think Pippa’s face paint certainly helped!

The boys’ 3/4 race went very well for MNC. Niko Cuneo tagged off to Brady Morgeau and Cole Shullenberger who came in one behind the other and clinched it for a first place podium finish! All the Festival medals were made of sustainable wood by Gould students- a nice touch!

The 1/2 relay was a mixed gender event and Kate Carlson and Ryley Migeau skied really well and finished third behind two all-boy teams. Although they were first for the girls, they weren’t too happy to be beaten by a couple of boy teams. You’ll get them next time girls! Tessa Diller did well with her team-mate from Frost Mountain, June Yates-Rusch and ended up on the podium with a seventh place (that’s her on the far left). Great skiing girls!

Because of the cold, the parade and the awards were held inside at the end of the day. We all wore capes and paraded around the field house with the rest of the districts. The field house had an expo feel to it with District food tables set up, info tables, lots of people and of course, the kids playing basket ball in their socks. There was also an indoor skate park which was great fun in socks! After the parade and awards, it was on to dinner and a well-earned rest!

Sunday was the individual classic race. A glorious sun beamed down on a cold and breezy morning. Coaches & Wax Techs Rosemary, Tom Thurston, Eric Barker & Damien Bolduc were on site early, testing the klister and trying to figure which was fastest with the best kick! Because the temps were forecasted to rise considerably, we elected to set up the food tent at the race venue so we could have some hot food for everyone on-site.Thanks to Eric Barker, we used the MMU wax trailer to haul lots of gear and as a base for waxing. We parked it in a perfect spot- warmed by the sun, close to the race trail, easy to test skis and a little bit out of the hullabaloo of the start/finish area.

For the classic races, skiers were started in waves of six every minute. MNC skiers skied well and proved once again that they are a force to be reckoned with!

The day started with the girls’ 7/8 race. Quincy, Ava & Camille have been skiing together and trading first place finishes for many years now and this year continued the saga. Today was Quincy’s day- she got Ava by half of a second! Camille finished in a strong fifth. Hattie Barker (MMU suit, above right), a seventh grader, skied very well and came in 27th. Camille and Quincy are graduating from BKL and will move on to Eastern Cups next year. Ava & Hattie have one more year in BKL. If these gals keep skiing together, they all are going to get faster and faster! Watch out world!

In the boys 7/8 race, eighth grader Aiden Burt double poled the entire 3.7 km course to a first place finish. He graduates from BKL this year as well and is pumped to move on to Eastern Cups next year!

As mentioned earlier, we had seven girls in the 5/6 race and they all skied really well!

Esther Cuneo used her upper body strength and double poled the 2.7km course to a first place finish! Virginia Cobb had another stellar performance and beat out some of her New England rivals from Ford Sayer and Putney to finish fourth!

Carly Trapeni had her best race of the season with a fourteenth place! Finley Barker kicked and glided her way to a 28th. Greta Kilburn also had a great race and finished 19th!

Julia with her quick technique skied into 16th and Mia Diller rounded it out for the girls, coming in 39th.

In the boy’s 5/6 race, Taylor’s excellent classic technique put him in 21st and Carl’s strong double poling resulted in a 29th (below: Carl on the left, Taylor on the right).

Jordon Shullenberger, who only comes to practice about once per week because he’s usually playing soccer, finished 11th in the boys 5/6 race! What a performance!

After the morning races, it was back to the wax bench because things had warmed up considerably, calling for a change in the wax of the day for the younger kids. Eighth grade graduation and the lollipop race followed, giving us a nice break before the younger kids’ races.

In the 3/4 boys, race, Niko Cuneo decided to double pole it, put in a fantastic effort and came in second! Brady Morigeau skied really fast as well and finished fourth, one second out of third! Cole Shullenberger (above on the left), also had a great race and finished 15th! In the girl’s 3/4 race, Pippa Diller skied very well and finished 17th!
Bundled Relay partners!

Last but not least, was the 1/2 boys & girls race. Kate Carlson handily won the girls race with her relay buddy, Ryley, coming in fifth and Tessa Diller not far behind in tenth. Unfortunately, our team photographer had to leave and could not get photos of all the younger kids racing. If anyone has some good pics of these young skiers, please send them to me and I will add them to our Flikr album.

Kate after the classic race.

All in all, another great Festival for MNC! It’s impressive that most of our kids finished in the top 20 of their age groups! So many thanks to everyone who helped make the Festival fun and successful for the kids: Victoria Priganc for organizing the food, Dave Priganc who took all these pictures, Eric Barker, Tom Thurston & Damian Bolduc for helping with the wax, Heidi Hill and Brad Carlson who helped our kids in the relay tag zone, and all the coaches and parents who brought food, made sure kids were keeping warm, and got kids to the start on time. It certainly takes a village, or rather, a Club, to pull all this off! Driving home from the Festival, I felt exhausted but exhilarated and so proud of all our kids! They are totally awesome!

EHSC/U16 Qualifiers

By Adam Terko on 19 February, 2017 in Junior Blog, Uncategorized

Vermont skiing runs deep. The talent and speed of skiers from the 802 is really something to behold when, after a whole season of racing on the Eastern Cup, you can show up at the qualifiers for the VT Eastern HS and U16 teams and find the standings just as tight.

With two 3k races in one day, the competition for spots on the U16 and EHS teams is cutthroat no matter what, and I like to use an analogy for people either new to the area or new to the sport: in the ski world, New England is like the Scandinavia of the United States. And within that Scandinavia, Vermont is most definitely Norway.

Last season at the EHS races, all of the Vermonters, male and female, were finishing in the top 2/3 of the 100+ racers in each event. That means that just making the VT team alone means you are very capable of placing in the top half of ALL the New England racers. If you needed some in-person proof of the strength of Vermont skiers, this past Saturday at Craftsbury would’ve been a great taste of speed and power.

Speed and power combining nicely. Isaac (9th classic, 3rd skate) has had one heck of a late-season surge, and this photo displays why Nordic skiers do plenty of strength training!

Don’t forget about finesse either, as Ava is likely to remind you when you watch her stride by!

This is a big event that brings ALL of Vermont skiing together, from the public high schools, to the clubs, to the ski academies, to the prep schools. It’s fun to see everyone hammer out there together and it’s also a good reminder that taking proactive and extra steps with training and racing can mean big things when the season rolls along and there’s big events on the line. Skiers with club and academy affiliations were ubiquitous among the top 30 finishers on the results sheet and, by and large, made up nearly the entirety of the EHS team. Vermont skiers are not shy about working hard, engaging with skiing in the offseason, and participating in organizations that are professional and proactive about training well and staying on the forefront of the sport.

Magda committed to MNC year-round and after a great summer, fall and winter of training has found herself in the top-10 of the U16 Eastern Cup rankings, while also earning a spot on both the U16 and EHS teams Saturday!

Will has been a hardworking MNC athlete for years. Two seasons ago he was bummed to not make the EHS team…last year he made it, and this year he narrowly missed out on the JN team and stomped the qualifier with a top-10 overall spot at the end of both races…oh, and as you can tell he is also pretty consistent with his strength training 😉

Conditions for the morning classic races were great for the women, who competed first and got to experience a beautiful combo of warm air and cold snow. Rick deserves a TON of thanks for helping out at the wax bench, and together we were able to work on skis while Sara kept things focused down at the start and amid the skiing scene outside. One thing we were able to do was really focus on testing and preparing good glide for the classic race. Sound crazy? That’s actually a goal I’ve had for a while and have wanted to implement more, ever since I was a wax tech at JNs last year and got to do what was basically World Cup-level ski prep. For the classic race at JNs we spent 75% of our time testing glide and 25% of the time with kick. And that was on a tricky klister day! There is a lot more speed in classic races these days: even if racers aren’t double poling a whole course, they are double poling a lot MORE of each race, and carrying more speed than ever into and out of downhills. Not focusing on ski speed and glide wax during classic races is simply making a sacrifice and on Saturday we made the most of things with productive topcoat and structure testing for the morning’s events. This played dividends in the men’s race too, as rapid temp increases meant kick was hard to come by for basically every team…so when you have little kick you really get a lot of benefit from fast skis!

Alex making the most of the speed! He just missed out on EHS this weekend but will look to nab a spot at States. As Marika commented during the skate race “wow you know MNC sure has a lot of man-buns going on” (that’s a reference to the hairstyle and not the anatomy, just to be clear)

Finding every second: Ben didn’t quite make the EHS team but he had 2 solid races and isn’t done yet this season!

As the day grew on the temps just got warmer, as you can probably tell from the shirtless skate photos. Sun’s out, guns out! One interesting factor in these races were the start lists, which were randomly seeded (as far as I can tell) and meant some folks got to ski with and among competitors they might not see much of. This was great to see out on course, and it meant lots of passing and shifting out there which also meant spectating was really fun too as you never knew who might come flying around a corner or up a hill next!

Ali had arguably her strongest classic race of the year (12th overall) and followed it with another great skate race (13th) to qualify for the EHS team and end the day as the top-ranked girl going on the U16 trip

Timmy had a solid classic race and then busted out one of his top skate races of the year for 13th overall and 1st U16 (JN qualifiers like himself included). Turns out a little rest goes a long way! Here he is displaying great balance and power application, as well as the need for a sunglasses sponsor (Smith? Oakley? Bliz? Looking at you!)

The Pug Cheer was at its most vibrant and loud in the morning, and it was a good sign of things to come as the spots on the team continued to be claimed by MNC skiers! After being sick during last year’s qualifier, Baxter continued a strong season by making his first EHS team. Sammie did the same, and as a first-year U16 she’ll get to experience 2 Championship events along with Magda and Ali!

Baxter finishing up the skate race; this is what laying it all on the line looks like!

Much like Baxter, Sammie has a powerful engine to work with and a rapid-fire V1 to match, so the hills don’t stand a chance!

A big congrats to all the skiers who raced this past weekend and represented the Pugs…some that were absent in the photos above include Eli, Kai, Phil, Isabella, Henry, Quincy, Marika, Aidan, and Sam. What a busy but fun and fast day! Here are some numbers to look at:

EHS Qualifiers: 7 (Isaac, Will, Baxter, Timmy, Ali, Sammie, Magda) with special note that Aidan and Ava (U14s) would’ve scored spots on the EHS team although they are not yet eligible!

U16 Qualifiers: 3 (Ali, Sammie, Magda) with special note that Timmy qualified but will be at Junior Nationals, and both Aidan and Ava would’ve also qualified.

Teams/Clubs in the women’s overall top 15: 5 (MNC, Craftsbury, SMS, GMVS, Auburn)

Teams/Clubs in the men’s overall top 15: 6 (MNC, Craftsbury, GMVS, SMS, CVU, Frost)

Results via Bart Timing

Some happy Pugs after the conclusion of a long sunny day!

Final bonus photo: young Niko out for a rip, racing up with the big boys! Way to go! Thanks to Gary Solow for ALL the photos in this post!

Super extra bonus: Eliza, Timmy and Marika all raced the Biathlon Nor-Am in Lake Placid this weekend, with Eliza and Marika going 1-2 in the Youth Women and Timmy taking 2nd in the Youth Men!

Thoughts in a Blizzard

By Adam Terko on 13 February, 2017 in Uncategorized

The drive home from the final Eastern Cup race in Holderness was a headlong battle with snowy roads and drifting whiteouts. The extended travel home left plenty of extra car time for ruminating on an Eastern Cup season that was all sorts of exciting and heartbreaking, sometimes all in a very condensed period.

When races are going well, travelling over the snow can feel effortless. When you aren’t 100%, for any number of reasons, it can feel like driving across New England in a blizzard: the path isn’t always easy to see, you aren’t going as fast as you want to be, and it takes a lot longer than you think for the distance to get covered.

The team hit somewhat of a low point on Saturday, at least performance-wise. I don’t often like to be negative, especially since there were certainly some standout performances and no lack of effort on the race course, but I also think this group has worked hard and committed themselves enough to be honest and understand that there will be lows in addition to highs. I’ll be the first to admit that I approached the first day of this weekend with a little too much pressure on my mind, which radiated out. One of the most apparent things both Sara and I have seen this year is how obvious it is that the skiers race fastest when they’re having fun. Take the fun out of it and you lose the edge, to some extent. Or, at the very least, you alter the focus in a detrimental way.

It’s a delicate balance, maintaining fun while also striving for performance. Sometimes we err too strongly on one side or the other, and the end results (I use the term “results” in both a broader and narrower sense) stick out like someone skating in a classic race. To be sure, there are already thoughts and plans brewing when it comes to capturing and capitalizing on the right levels of excitement, pressure, enjoyment, and seriousness.

After some hotel pool time, a team dinner (thanks Sharon!) and a quick meeting before bed the group was ready to rebound on Sunday. A twisty and fun course and abundant snow on the trees and from the sky helped fuel some great performances and get us fired up for the remainder of the season.

Timmy will be representing the Pugs at JNs in the U16 men’s category this season, while Ali ended up just outside as the alternate for the women’s U16 team. Still waiting for U18 results but it looks like Isaac may have nabbed a spot while Will and Eliza will wait to see how things shake out with the college skiers!

Next week is the EHS/U16 qualifiers where we’ll have more opportunities to put MNC skiers on some Champsionship teams!

Isaac, having another killer race and possibly “breaking the bubble” for a chance at JNs. Very interesting to see the various ways skiers handled this awkward steep corner: I saw everything from figure-skating steps to herringbone (in a skate race!) and it made for some good photos too, as Gary Solow demonstrates

Ali shown here on the same turn. Don’t think the bubble was broken this weekend, but nothing motivates a summer and fall of training like having been the “Alternate” on the New England JN team the season before …just ask Greg Burt

Preparing skis as the snow begins to fall…(Dave Priganc photo)

Timmy heading out of the start. 50% of the New England U16 boys team is in this photo: Tim, Matt, and Zander. Excited to work with this group (plus Will, Josh, and Griffin, just behind Zander here) in Lake Placid! (Gary Solow photo)

Will leaning in hard and carrying the weight around the bend. Best EC race ever to close out his HS career – 20th place and 134 USSA points…still too close to call on the JN bubble so this one’s gonna have to wait a few days…(Gary Solow photo)

Dynamic skiing from Magda, ready to shoot form some Championship teams this coming weekend! Coming back from some sickness but capping off a great first EC season with lots of top-15s and some serious top 10s (Gary Solow photo)

Here’s a shot of some nice classic skiing with Alex. Great weight commitment. Busy week for this guy with the Tour De Chittenden followed right up with EC #4

Speaking of busy schedules, Sammie has also been doing a LOT of racing lately! Here she is working the downhills in the classic race (Gary photo)

A speedy and smooth last EC day for Eliza! (photo by NENSA)

Quite a strong race for Baxter, who held together his wicked tempo for the whole 10k and is gonna be a threat in longer races with even more experience next year (Gary photo)