NCAA Chanpionships 2023

 Back to Lake Placid one more time for the NCAA Championships!  Placid has been a hot destination for us this winter - first Thanksgiving Camp, then an Eastern Cup for a few folks, then Regionals, and finally the big finish.  Our small but brave crew - Jori, Aggie, and coaches - left campus last Monday after classes for the long drive.  Next morning we awoke to new snow and great conditions across the entire trail network at Mt Van Hoevenberg.  Over the next couple days, we did a lot of wax testing and just enough skiing to stay sharp.  On Wednesday evening we continued our new tradition (started last year at Soldier Hollow) of a "banquet" - a nice dinner out to replace the championship banquet that was a casualty of the pandemic.  By the morning of the skate race, we were ready to go.  Conditions were perfect - mid 20s and snow that was not too fast and not too slow.  Jori had the honor of starting the race as bib 1 - everyone's favorite place to be!  She started out aggressively and was able to hold off a hard-chasing MSU skier to cross the line first - a nice personal victory.  A few bibs back, Aggie got off to a smooth start and hung on as the climbs took their toll.  In the end, we were a bit overmatched, and we had to settle for 38th (Jori) and 39th (Aggie).  Not the results we were looking for, but also not a shock since these two came in as the two lowest-ranked skiers in the field.  They both skied hard and gave what they had - not much else we could ask for!  We spent the next day resting and testing.  Aggie helped Jori study for her art history exam, which she then crushed (we think) - a true team effort.  Saturday morning started off cold, with perfect firm tracks and nice hard wax conditions.  Things got a bit tricky as it warmed, with the sun coming out intermittently to keep us on our toes.  The new NCAA fluoro testing procedure also made things interesting, since we had to deliver skis to the equipment control area well before the race, which limited our ability to make last-minute adjustments.  Fortunately, the skiers were pretty content with their skis after a couple rounds of testing, so we were able to finish our applications with minimal drama.  With that, it was time for history to be made - the first-ever women's 20k race at the NCAA Championships!  The race started out hot, as per usual for a college women's mass start, and the pack strung out fairly quickly.  Jori settled into a small group in the 30s - she was determined to hang on to some of the Eastern skiers she'd been competing with all season, and she did.  She stayed in the tracks on the climbs, took extra strokes going into the descents, and worked every transition to gain seconds wherever possible.  As the race wore on, she stayed strong and gained a few places, even threatening to break into the top 30 for a while.  In the end, she finished 33rd - a fantastic effort and an outstanding finish by the youngest skier in the field!  Meanwhile, Aggie was focused on skiing her own race and staying as smooth and efficient as possible.  She started at the back and tailed another skier for the first half before the gap gradually grew too big to allow her to maintain contact.  Even so, she kept competing hard - she did a beautiful job of staying in the tracks and working the wax, even when most of the skiers ahead of her were slipping and sometimes walking up the hills.  Most importantly in my mind, she kept pushing hard over the tops of the hills and working the downhills.  In the end, she wasn't able to catch the skiers she was chasing and ended up 40th, but this was a tremendous effort.  Aggie hasn't been on form for several weeks now, and we came into these championships knowing that she might not be at her best, so the big win for us on this day was to ski technically well, push hard the whole way, and never stop competing.  That's really hard to do when you're skiing all alone and you know you don't have your best stuff - it's easy to convince yourself that the little things don't matter and just shut it down and cruise to the end (or not finish at all).  Aggie never let this happen - she skied hard the whole way, and I'm incredibly proud of her for this - a huge win for her mental game even if the result wasn't what we wanted.  Overall, this was a great day of racing for us and a really fun way to close out the season.  I learned a lot at these championships, as always, and I'm super excited to talk things over with the team this spring and make plans for next year.  It's been a successful season, but I know we can be so much better.  Looking forward to getting started - but not just yet.  For now, it's time for all of us to enjoy Spring Break and get some rest!