Chummy Cup 2023

 This year's Chummy Broomhall Cup continued the recent tradition of weather-related chaos.  Like last year, we did a last minute relocation due to a big snowstorm, moving the race to Quarry Road.  Unlike last year, we moved the race one day earlier instead of later, holding it on Friday night.  As usual, Quarry Road delivered with a nice 2.5k loop under the lights - first time in my memory we've ever had a college race at night!  The snow was fast and the course was fun, with some challenging turns and a couple of big bumps, terrain park style.  The women's race got off to a hot start, with a group of six quickly breaking away.  Emma, Aggie, and Jori were in this pack, and they jockeyed back and forth with three Colby skiers right up until the end.  Jori sprinted it out with Gretta Scholz of Colby for the win - it was too close to call, so we declared it a tie.  Emma and Aggie were right behind in 3rd and 4th, and Morgan (7th), Grace M (8th), and Ingrid (9th) earned All-State honors as well.  This gave us a slight lead heading into the men's race.  The guys started out a bit slower, with a big lead pack and a lot of back and forth.  The race came down to the wire, but sadly the Colby guys proved too tactically clever for us - they slipped their top 3 in front of ours, and we had to settle for 4th (Zach), 5th (Carson), and 6th (James).  Adam, who had challenged for the lead before being thwarted by a broken pole, skied remarkably well to stay close to the leaders and finished 7th.  Although our crew skied well and honestly looked great, we couldn't overcome the podium sweep, losing the cup to Colby by a narrow margin.  Not the glorious finish we wanted, but a super fun event nonetheless, and a great learning experience for our skiers - some good things for us to work on this off-season!  It was so great to get together with Bates and Colby one last time - fitting that we'd end a long, hard carnival season with the same friends who joined us for all of our pre-season races.  So nice to have Maine college skiing going strong - looking forward to getting back after it next year!

That's the end for most of our skiers, but championship season rolls on with NCAAs this week and JNs next week.  Aggie and Jori have qualified for NCAAs in Lake Placid, and Emma and Grace M will be representing New England at JNs in Fairbanks.  Stay tuned!