Colby Carnival 2014

Last weekend's Colby Carnival was a minor miracle.  Several days of warm temps and rain had turned New England into a sheet of ice, yet somehow the Quarry Road crew was able to put together a decent race loop, and the races went on as scheduled.  We're glad they did, because it was a great weekend for our team - one of our best carnivals ever.  Friday's classic saw more rain, which meant klister and chaos.  Remarkably, we kept things reasonably well under control and got good skis on most everyone's feet (what a difference it makes to have a team full of athletes with klister skis).  All three first-years skied extremely well - an impressive start to their college careers.  Big PRs for Riley (despite imperfect skis) and also Tyler, who made a bold decision to catch a ride from UNH's top skier - he blew up in the last couple kilometers, but it was a great learning experience and a decent result as well.  James was the showstopper, though - he crushed it for a 9th place finish - best classic result ever for a Bowdoin man.

Somehow, the course held up for Saturday's skate, although the turns quickly got scraped down to ice, which was fairly sketchy.  The women's team put four skiers in the top 40 - that's definitely never happened before.  Great race also by Hannah Marshall - easily the best performance of her college career.  The men were solid as well - Riley dropped his brand new PR by a few more spots and just missed scoring an NCAA point, and Alec had a huge race and a PR as well.  This race doubled as the Broomhall Cup - Kaitlynn and James ended up First Team All-State, and Riley, Hannah Miller, Eva, Alec, and Tess all earned Second Team honors.  All in all, this was a fantastic way to start the season.  Everyone looked great - all of the little elements of technique that we've been working on are starting to fall into place, and there's just a certain liveliness to the movements.  I'm really happy with this start, and hopeful that we have more good stuff to come.

We got great support from the team parents all weekend long - so nice to have a solid crew of fans out there.  Here are some photos from Deb Miller:

And a couple more from Steve Fuller of Flying Point Road: