Closing weekend

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 were able to shutdown the trail Wednesday morning to preserve the surface for the race, knowing the forecast for Thursday/Friday was going to make the snow a bit messy. It was a good thing we were able to keep the trail closed as temperatures on Friday climbed to 67 degrees before starting to drop in the middle of the night, giving us a deep enough freeze to have a quality surface for the race on Saturday.

Friday morning
After the Friday morning b net reset!
Reggie feeling good about the conditions for Saturday's race
With over 300 registrations and a 1:00PM BBQ date with coach/chef Rich Prata, we had to lean on our race crew to keep things moving. Lorna Thompson, Doug Hall, and Shane Delameter kept things organized at the start despite the absence of start ref extraordinaire, Drew O'Connor. John Perkoff and Sinead Lavery were manning the timing computers enabling the start crew to continue sending racers every 15 seconds. Other than the snow-snake that took a few skis off at the top of the bottom pitch of the blue course, the surface held up beautifully and the race finished with plenty of time to get to the BBQ and subsequent awards ceremony. Thank you to everyone for your help in pulling off one final race of the season and congrats to all of our athletes, parents, coaches, and friends who competed! The final day of program on Sunday had some of our teams training SL one last time before the offseason while other teams enjoyed one final day of ripping around the mountain in their best St. Patrick's Day green!







While many of our athletes were enjoying the final weekend at home, we had a number of our athletes on the road competing in regional and state events. Here is a recap of the amazing competitions we had athletes representing WRF

  • U10/12 athletes competing against the best in NYSSRA in Kandahar Championships at Toggenburg.
  • U12/14 athletes competing against the best in the Eastern Region in the Francis Piche Invitational at Gunstock Mountain in NH.
  • U14's at Eastern Championships competed against the best in East at Whiteface Mountain.
  • U16's at Eastern Finals competed against the best in the East at Gore.
  • U19's at Eastern Finals (happening now!) competed against the best in the East at Gore Mountain.






It is no secret that the success of the program hinges upon the engagement of the athletes and parents, as well as the strength of the staff. Parents pack their kids in the car to make the trek to Windham after a long work week while much of our staff does the same. While some of our coaches have children in the program, many of them do not, but they all continue to do it because they love ski racing and the relationships they have made being part of WRF. Relationships are the lifeblood of any successful program - the relationships between families as well as the relationships with the coaching staff. The 2018/19 season had 83 members of the staff working 11,942 hours with our athletes! Over the coming weeks, the head coaches will be working on evaluating the season and looking at how we can improve and continue to offer the best possible product for our families.

Thank you for a great season and, for me personally, an amazing first year at WRF!

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