Start of Season note from John

The Nordic Team opened the race season at Telstar High School Saturday. The popular relay always draws a large field and gives teams the chance to start the year in a fun event featuring three different races. Merriconeag entered two teams in the mixed relay, one team in the mixed school relay and a single racer (Davis) in the individual race.

It turned out being a perfect day to race - sun, cold, little wind and packed powder tracks.  In the opening race we had two strong teams, Samantha, Graham, Lily and Forrest raced well and finished a very close 4^th, while our 2nd team of Carlin, Dylan, Fiona A and Tucker finished 14th out of 69 teams. Fiona CD and Emma raced in the mixed school race with a pair of Portland skiers and both had the chance to get in and race.  Fiona CD completed her first race in a while and looked strong, and Emma skied well in her first High School race. Davis was our lone racer in the individual race and finished a strong 11th.

The team was fortunate to hold a Christmas camp in Rangeley thanks to the generosity of the Pierce family. Their trailside condo was very convenient, allowing us to ski two workouts each day and have a relaxing mid day lunch, letting the kids recover between sessions. Although the RLTC was not fully open, the tracks we did ski were in good shape and we were able to do a fair amount of good classic skiing. The camp featured a fun team relay and a few intervals, some drills, but mostly just continuous skiing - a good way to start the year. Thanks to Susan and Jason, along with the Sarah and Dan, for making the camp a huge success.

The dryland phase of the year was short this year thanks to an early season snow storm, allowing the team to get on skis early.  Unfortunately this cost us our roller skiing workouts, but not a bad trade however.

The WMC races start Wednesday at Pineland on the 8th and we will host the next race on the 15^th, also at Pineland.  All are welcome to come out and support the team. Complete results for high school races along with articles can be found on the website mainehighschoolskiing.com.
John