Midd Carnival 2020

Sorry for the late post with no photos - lots going on these past few days!  Right now we're in Montana getting ready for NCAAs - apologies for giving a brief recap for one of our best carnivals ever.  Regionals at the Middlebury Carnival was an eventful finish to the regular season.  The women found a new level for the skate race - Gabby (5th) and Renae (6th) absolutely destroyed their skate PRs.  Lily closed out the scoring with a strong 22nd to put the team in 3rd, and Meredith broke into the top 40 for the first time.  The men followed up with a 2nd place finish, led by Elliot's best ever skate finish in 5th, Christian 8th, and Peter 14th.  Orion served as our assistant wax tech and came up huge - with his help we were able to test a ton of fluoros and get good skis on everyone's feet.  We ended the day with a great dinner hosted by the team parents, including some senior gifts and carefully crafted limericks.  Parents are a huge part of our program - just as it's sad to see our seniors, go, it's also sad to say goodbye to senior parents.  We'll miss this group so much!

Next day in the classic races our skiers gave us a good show.  Renae and Gabby went out with the lead group - as things spread out and one skier broke away, they stayed with the chase group.  Renae pushed the pace to break up the group on the final lap - she sprinted to the line with Erin Bianco of Colby and narrowly finished 3rd - her first podium!  Gabby finished close behind in 5th.  Meanwhile, Meredith was having a huge day - she steadily moved through the pack and battled near the top 30 for the second half of the race, finishing 33rd for another big PR.  Sometimes one breakthrough leads to another, and it was super exciting to see this happen for Meredith after a year of really hard work.  Not to be outdone, the men skied an equally exciting race - Elliot had an almost identical race to Renae, outlasting the rest of the chase pack and sprinting to the line with James Kitch of Harvard to finish on the podium in 3rd.  Christian finished 9th and Peter had his best classic finish in 12th.  This was a super clutch performance by Peter - he came into the day knowing that he needed something around 12th to have a shot at qualifying for NCAAs.  Several times during the race it looked like he was going to fall back, but each time he fought back and stayed just outside the top 10 to lock up a huge finish and keep himself in contention.  When the dust settled, he was in a tie for the final qualifying spot but lost the tiebreaker (best single finish) to Willson Moore from Midd (not the end of this story, though - more in a minute).  As a team, we finished 2nd in the nordic scoring - best finish ever!  Elliot, Christian, and Gabby all made 2nd Team All-East, with Renae missing it by just one point.  All four of them made it official and qualified for NCAAs.  Just a great carnival and a great regular season for the team.

As always, the one sad note of any Regionals is the end of (most of) our seniors' careers - Cirque, Fiona, Lily, Russell, and Orion are moving on to new adventures.  It's been an amazing run with this group - they've been right at the center of Bowdoin Nordic's most successful seasons ever.  We'll say much more about these guys later - for now, let's just say that they'll be missed.  I can't thank them enough for everything they've done to make our team a better place.  Much love to all of them.

One last note - a couple days after the carnival, Harvard's Remi Drolet got an invitation to ski the North American World Cups for Canada, which allowed Peter to qualify for NCAAs in his place. Such a big accomplishment for a first-year - so proud of this guy! Five skiers qualified for NCAAs - amazing!  So - now we're in Bozeman getting ready for the final act of this amazing season.  Stay tuned for more fireworks!