Early season note from John

The team had a very productive four day ski camp after Christmas in Rangeley.  Thanks to the Pierce family and Pat Phillips for hosting.  Also a thanks to all the families for support with food and transportation and to Jason for helping out coaching.  Although the conditions were not as good as last year, the trails were good enough that we were able to get in plenty of skiing and finished off the camp with a time trial that got the team ready to start the racing part of the season.

We traveled to Bethel on Saturday at the end of vacation week and competed in the Telstar Relay. This year the course was moved to the Gould Academy Trails and, thanks to lots of work by the host, they were able to provide a challenging course.  Due to caution Samantha sat out the race to rest an injury.  This provided Olivia the chance to ski in the A heat with the first team.  She, along with Fiona A., Graham and Forrest, posted the fastest time of the day.  Our second A wave team of Tucker, Nick, Fiona L. and Louise were a strong 10th out of 34 teams.  Zack had the fastest time in the individual race, and Eli and Jannis also had strong results in their first high school races (for Jannis I believe it was his first  race ever!).

The team contested our first WMC race on 1-7-15 against the strongest teams in the conference, Yarmouth and Falmouth, as well as Fryeburg.  Due to first race organizational snafus, Fiona A. and Samantha were late to the start.  Sam was able to ski right on in the nick of time to her appointed spot and won the race.  Fiona was slotted in at the end of the race but it appears the timers failed to give a finish - too bad as she did ski a hard effort.  Olivia skied a great first WMC race and finished 4th, Louise and Fiona L. rounded out the girls scoring.  The boys had a great race as Forrest, Tucker and Zach went 2,3,4 and Eli finished 12th.  The boys were one point back of Falmouth for a 2nd place team score.  Congratulations to Olivia, Louise and Calla for their first WMC races, to Thomas for his first WMC race wearing the MWS colors, and to all the skiers for their fine efforts, regardless of whether or not they were scorers for the team.

Merriconeag will host a WMC race Wednesday 1-14-15 at Pineland - come out and cheer the team on!

John