A snow storm, the Polar Vortex, and an amazing weekend of racing and training!

We certainly weren't spared when it came to the Polar Vortex that swept across the country. There were some upsides though:

  • The Polar Vortex came through midweek. Good for the athletes and parents, not so good for me.
  • We needed snow and ahead of the Vortex, we received 10 inches of beautiful powder! Then the temperatures dropped dramatically the the snowmaking team buried Warm Up. Literally.
  • With the trail buried, it took 2 snowcats pushing for 11 hours to get the trail ready for the second Mini World Cup/U10 Kandahar of the season!
  • The result was perfection. An amazing surface Saturday for the MWC/U10K and some of the best training of the year on Sunday!
  • We had the luxury of training from the Lower Wedel start to the Warm Up finish for U14 SG training and U12 GS training on Sunday. The U14 SG ran roughly 55 seconds while the U12 GS ran an average of 1 minute 25 seconds!



Warm Up engulfed in a beautiful snowmaking cloud!







 


U14 SG from the Wedel start

U14 SG

U12 GS

U12 GS from Wedel
Looking ahead, we are hosting a U12 Council GS on Sunday of this coming weekend. Our U12 Kandahar team will be racing on Warm Up with first run scheduled to start at 9:30AM. We are still looking for a couple of gate keepers for the race so if you haven't signed up, please check out the Volunteer Registration Doc and see if you can fill a spot! It is only way to gain access to the race trail and be close to all the action!

Team Updates:

Congratulations to our U16/19 squad who qualified and competed at the Empire State Winter Games. It is an honor to qualify and our team represented WRF with great class throughout the event!

Our U14 team is headed to Gore for their annual SG weekend with two days of training followed by a race. They are closing in on their final qualifications for State Champs - good luck with the last push!

The U12 Kandahar team races this weekend at Windham on the heels of some stellar results at the Hunter Paneled SL where they stacked the top 10 in both genders!

The U10 Kandahar team has completed two of the MWC/U10K races and are seeing some great progress. They will get a taste of RVW Council racing when they can enter the Kombi at Windham on March 3rd.

The MWC program continues to grow, seemingly on a daily basis with new athletes arriving! They are halfway through their official MWC season and have two MWC races remaining on their schedule on February 16th and 23rd.

Good luck to all of our athletes in action this weekend and for those entering another training block, work hard!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

February Flyby!

Image
I know February is the shortest month, but it's hard to believe that we just flew through the final weekend of the month. It's seems that not long ago we were preparing for the first weekend of program with our coaches clinic. The remainder of Flex Week Training was incredible. We had a perfect surface for the high volume days we wanted to offer our athletes. The coaching staff saw great progress throughout the week with all of our athletes running double sessions. The U14/16/19 teams trained GS and SL each day while our U8/10/12 athletes worked on free skiing skills and drills in the morning, followed by an afternoon training session with a different style set each day. Our athletes have come so far under the guidance of the coaching staff. It was amazing watching the final Mini World Cup yesterday and seeing how much the athletes have progressed since our first MWC. This season we put an added focus on using the MWC as a learning environment not just for the athlet
Read more

Closing weekend

Image
Why the delay before writing about the final weekend? As with every season, it is always bittersweet to see it come to a close. The nets are rolled up for the last time, gates are bundled and stored, coaches and athletes extend well wishes for the coming offseason. These moments of closure hit me harder than expected as I wasn't quite ready for my first season to end. Before getting into end of season notes, we have the happenings of the final weekend to cover! On Saturday, the Jeff Tait Championships were contested and continued as a fundraiser for Jeff's two young boys as well as an end of the season championship for WRF. As was the case with much of the season, we were dealt some difficult cards when it came to weather leading up to the event. Thursday night provided temperatures in the high 40's coupled with high winds that ate away at the snowpack at an aggressive rate. As you can imagine, our beloved b nets took a beating and everything had to be reset. We
Read more

Holiday training madness!

Image
Holiday training has commenced! The conditions are leaning slightly to the side of variable around the mountain but with some cold nights coming up for snowmaking, I think we will have some improved conditions when we return for training on the 26th! We had a great weekend with a large portion of our program on snow Saturday and Sunday. Monday saw our numbers thin a bit, but we were still a presence on the hill with groups continuing to work on their fundamental base. Warm Up has officially been dubbed "The Glacier," due to the perfect, (super) firm surface. The kids have been making laps either in training environments or working on free skiing drills and we are so grateful to have The Glacier exclusively for our program. When doing slow speed drills, it is so great to be in a safe and enclosed environment without the risk of collisions with the public. Riding with legendary, Franz Krickl! Perfection Sinead made an appearance on The Glacier!
Read more