Today was a gorgeous day for a race: blue skies and sun, no wind, fast snow - perfect. The team responded with our best race of the year. Spencer provided the day's highlight with a 30th place finish, our best of the year. He got himself in good position out of the start in spite of a high seed, and moved up throughout the race. It was exciting to see him battling with so many good skiers and looking like he belonged there. He was in the 20s for a while before a couple crashes dropped him back, but he hung in there and finished with a strong sprint to lock up an NCAA qualifying point. To my knowledge, only 3 other Bowdoin first-years have ever scored NCAA points: Walt and Elissa in 2007 and Ed Hunter in 2005. The rest of the team was solid. Colman and Walt finished 34th and 36th - nice to have our top 3 guys in the 30s. Nat and Niko had good days as well, although between the two of them they broke two poles and lost a basket on a third.
On the women's side, Courtney was 45th, Erin 50th, and Olivia 52nd. Erin and Olivia were both really happy with their races - they felt great on the climbs, and would have been several places higher if they hadn't crashed a couple times each (we struggled on the downhills again today). Maren's still recovering from a cold, but she showed good fire by chasing down another skier in the last couple kilometers. The little victories matter. Overall, I'm encouraged to have so many people feeling good today - I think we're starting to come into form at the right time. These next couple weekends should be fun.
We had great support again this weekend. Thanks to the many parents who helped feed the team (those groovy cranberry/Cheerio things from the Askins family really hit the spot). Thanks also to Jeremy Huckins '05 for showing up to cheer and help with wax testing yesterday. I'm sure there are some great photos out there - please pass them along if you have any!
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