Everyone loves the Middlebury Carnival (or at least I do). What's not to love? A well-designed course winding through Vermont woods and hills; fun twisty downhills and challenging climbs, but all very skiable; good snow and good snowmaking; and of course our team's favorite lodging spot, the Porter Mansion at the Middlebury Inn. It's a great setting for ski racing, and our team always has a great time. This year we had a special treat in the form of a double classic weekend - because the Bates Carnival sprint was changed to skate, the Midd sprint was changed to classic to go along with the scheduled 10k classic. For a minute it looked like the weather would make the coaches' lives miserable - once again we had a nasty storm on our travel day, and this one included some rain. Fortunately, it tapered off in time for us to drive over on Thursday afternoon/evening; better yet, the rain was light enough to leave the snow largely untransformed, and we continued our run of good clean hardwaxing. Friday was a classic sprint - our performance wasn't amazing, but it was much better than our early season sprint. Sadly, none of our men qualified - Lars was 29th for EISA, but didn't get to race heats due to some open racers who finished ahead of him. Eli had a solid race in 41st, with Adam 45th and Sawyer 51st. The women fared better - Emma qualified 5th, Jori 14th, and Kira 30th - her first time making the heats in a college sprint! Keira missed qualifying by just half a second, finishing 32nd. The heats were super fun to watch - Jori won her first round with an impressive running sprint up the last short hill into the stadium, and Emma led the whole way to cruise to a first round win as well. Kira wasn't able to advance but had a great time chasing the group up hills and around turns. Jori and Emma were paired up in the second heat - Emma again used a powerful double pole to take the heat win, while Jori kept it close in fourth. The other semifinal came in faster, so she was knocked out of lucky loser contention and ended her day in 8th. The finals were super competitive and the group stayed together through all the twists and turns - Emma double poled past almost everyone on the final climb, but wasn't quite able to overtake the leader, finishing 2nd for the day. Fun stuff and a good momentum builder for the next day. That night we enjoyed a fantastic potluck dinner courtesy of the team parents - so fortunate to have this kind of support! We couldn't linger too long, though, because the team had important business back at the inn - Bowdoin Nordic alumni will be glad to know that the team is still carrying on the tradition of running around the Porter Mansion in their bathrobes.
Saturday was cold, with nice hard tracks for another perfect classic skiing day. This race was combined with an Eastern Cup, so lots of excitement and lots of skiers on the trails. Will led the men as the 26th EISA finisher, with Adam 29th and Catcher tying Lars for the last scoring spot in 40th. Ollie had a nice race to finish 52nd - he's had some ups and downs with health and training this season, and it was so good to see him finally racing with better energy. Michael also scored a nice PR in 55th, continuing his improvement in classic striding. We were able to put five women in the top 30 in the women's race - Emma 4th, Jori 16th, Gillian 19th, Mirra 26th, and Keira 27th. Grace also posted a season-best 44th. These finishes were a great sign of depth, and also a sign of how much this group has accomplished that most of them walked away feeling like the race was only OK. We'll continue chasing those high expectations! We did get another podium on the day - Gillian was the top junior in the Eastern Cup! That's kind of a big deal, given how competitive the New England JNQ field is - also a strong statement about the qualify of EISA skiing. For the overall carnival we were 6th - a good solid weekend, if not our best. Looking forward to a big finish at Regionals in Jackson next week!
While the rest of the team was skiing at Middlebury, Caleb was over in Lake Placid competing at the Junior World Championships for nordic combined! This was tricky, since he's done no jumping all year aside from the qualifying competitions in December (and a couple practice jumps the day before the championships started). Nonetheless, he was able to put up some respectable results, helping the US to a 10th place finish in the team sprint and finishing 30th in the 10k individual race. So cool to have one of our skiers racing at a major international championship! Looking forward to seeing how his combined career develops in the coming years - for now, we're exciting to have him back for Regionals.
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