Morse Code: Racin'

I recently had the opportunity to race in the Eastern Cups at Whiteface, NY. It was a battle from the back each day, first runs were always super rough because holes just appeared everywhere. It was classical Whiteface weather with a rainy foggy drizzly but pretty warm out which was the only nice part of the weather.

There were two gs's and two sl's. I started in the 120's every day, I scored under a hundred but it wasn't about the points, it was more about the experience of skiing with the big boys. I got 2 silvers and a gold for J2's that week.

Then I came home to some awesome Super-G Eastern Cup races at the Loaf. I started 101 and 103 and scored a 93 and 83, giving me 88 Super-G fis points after TWO races! I think it was the new S.R.D. socks which I have been wearing which are just killer, you would be amazed how many compliments I get in the lodge from my bright colored colored S.R.D. ski socks.

With my 88 Super-G points I am 15th in the US for J2's and 9th in the world for my age (96').

I head off tomorrow morning for two FIS Devo gs races at Sugarbush in VT, wish me luck! Ski wicked fast to all those racing!

.)) Sam Morse

Somewhere, over tha Atlantic...

Hey everyone, it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but I’ve also been on the road, with lots of great stories!

As I’m writing this, I’m on the plane coming home from a 17 day trip in Europe with the Western Region. It was such a great experience! 7 girls were invited based on results from the NorAms in Panorama, Canada. The girls were me, Emma Naatz, Courtney Altringer, Haley Hanseler, Jackie Wiles, Morganne Murphy and Lena Andrews. Overall it was a great group to go with because we all got along great, which made the trip pain-free with no “girl-drama”.

I learned a lot about my skiing in Europe, and got to take a step back and redefine my approach to this crazy sport. The trip started off with a training day in Soelden, Austria; which was supposed to be a two day training block, but because of heavy snow and canceled races, we decided to drive 7 hours to Morzine, France where there were 2 GS races and a SL. In the SL, I finished 21st, moving up 8 places which I thought was a good result off of only 4 days of SL training this year! The GS races got canceled, so we packed up, and moved to Temu, Italy for a couple of days. In Temu there were 2 GS races. The first day, I did not finish, and the next day I backed it up with some not-so-great skiing.

After Temu, we got back on the road and headed to Folgaria, Italy where we skied 1 GS race where I had a killer first run, followed by a did not finish for 2nd run, but I was happy with my skiing. After that GS, we once again packed our bags and headed to Abetone for 1 SL and 1 GS. Both days, I wasn’t focused, as well as out of energy resulting from all the traveling, and didn’t do too great.

After Abetone, we got to take a day off and drove to Paganella, Italy where we walked around and shopped. That night we drove to Zillertal, Austria where we stayed in an actual farm house with cows! That night it snowed a bunch, and in the morning we had to put on chains just to get out of the driveway. The girls watched as me and my two coaches figured out how to put the chains on in less than 10 minutes to get to inspection!

The SL at Zillertall was probably the hardest race I will see all year. Girls from the World Cup showed up, and we got to see Hailey Duke! Because of all the snow, the conditions of the SL were extreme. The ruts were about waist-high by the time the 30th skier went, and I got to run 66th! Luckily I am from the northwest and I know how to survive. I skied from 66th to 48th, and then from 48th to around 35th after second run! Lots of girls DNFed, but it was so cool to see those World Cup girls tough out the waist-high holes at about every gate.

That day we decided to ditch the SL the next day, and that night we drove to Val Di Fassa, Italy for 2 final GS races where we got to race with the D Team! It was a great hill that reminded me a lot of home (flats, with one mild pitch). After a couple sour GS races, I turned my anger to fuel and pulled off some good runs! Both days, my first runs went great, followed by mild mistakes in the 2nd runs, but at the end of the trip I look back and see how much I learned and improved on this project. I want to thank Karin Harjo for all the hard work she did, and how great she was at putting up with all of us!

For about 5-7 nights in a row, we would usually be at one resort, pack up and move to another in under an hour and have to race the next day! The trip was all about the attitude of “wingin’ it” -consisting of waxing/scraping on the side of buildings, staying with cows, and getting lost too many times to count!

The next three weeks, I will be at home training and going to school. My next race will be Hampton Cup at Mission Ridge, and the Snow King at the end of Febuary! I haven’t gone to school in 29 days, so tomorrow will be very interesting!

P.S. Good job Alex Leaver at the Youth Olympic Games at Innsbruck for his top 10! Way to rep SRD!

.)) Anna Mounsey

Leave it to Leever: Youth Olympic Games!

Two races down, two to go. I have been so busy as of late that I have had literally no time to do anything at all.

Saturday and Sunday were the super g and the super combined respectively, and both were a blast. I have raced super g four or five times in the past few years so I really haven’t had much experience with the skills required for it. I was bib 17 for the day, a better bib than I would have expected for having 95 super g points. I felt like I had a decent run, I made a pretty big mistake in this middle crazy section of the course but I skied really well above and below that. When I got down I was a little disappointed with my time but I had a great split so I knew that I was flying. I was only 0.3 out after almost 40 seconds so I knew that without that mistake I could have been in contention for a podium spot. The middle part of the course was absolutely crazy and bizarre. You come over a left-footer roll, go through two big gs-like turns, a right-footer delay to a left-footer delay that was about a 90 degree turn. The next gate after the 2nd delay was a chicane gate that went straight into a 3-gate left-footed corridor for about 100+ meters on the flats. You finished the 3-gate corridor over a knoll into another 90 degree right-footer off the jump. Needless to say, it was pretty confusing and only 2 of the first 7 made it through there.

The super combined, one run of super g and one run of slalom combined together, was one of the most fun days racing I have ever had. They redressed the super g from the day before, so there was no major changes. I knew what I had to do to improve on the day before so I was confident in my abilities. I was bib 25 for the race because I had no super combined points, only about 20 people had points for the race which made the penalty at the end a remarkable 90. I skied the whole run really well and I felt great about the run when I went through the finish. A lot more guys finished that run than the day before so I wasn’t too surprised to see myself a little back. I thought I improved on my second time down, but so did everyone else. I was 2.6 out after the super g and slid back from 16th when I came through the finish line to 25th after everyone came down.

However, this actually worked to my advantage because I was still the same amount of time away from the leader while all these people who were finishing in front of me were just giving me a better start position for the slalom portion (after the super g, the top 30 are reversed for the second run). I got to go 6th out of the gate for the slalom, and the course was perfect. I was a little unsure of myself for a while before the start but Peter got me back into the right mindset. I really attribute so much of my success to him, he has a way of making you believe that you are one of the best skiers out there and that if you ski well you will be happy with the results. I had been doubting myself because of the points that the top guys had, but Peter fixed me right before my run. Thank you Peter!!!

I watched the guy who went right before me and knew that I could crush this race. I went down the course and went almost as hard as I can and when I got to the finish I knew that it was a really good run. I looked up on the scoreboard and saw my name there and just fist pumped in the air. I had to go to equipment control right after and it took me about the time of three or four people for me to finish; I kept peeking my head out of the tent as the guys came down to see if I was still in the lead. I kept the lead for a while, then one guy knocked me down, then I held that position, then another knocked me down, and then I fell off the board. I knew I didn’t have a real chance for the podium after my first run but I still hoped and it was a little disappointing seeing my name fall off the leader board. I finished the race in 10th place overall, a great position after my first run. I was 4th on the run (.23 out of the fastest) so that gives me a lot of confidence for the slalom on Saturday.

A lot of my family and my girlfriend will be there for that race so I’m exited to try and make them proud in the slalom and GS.

.)) Alex Leever

A New Paige: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again…

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again…

Well, happy to report that I had my first “official” J3 race of the season this past weekend. I was really nervous – first slalom race with the bigger gates, first time racing in Southern Vermont – I didn’t know what to expect and I really wanted to ski well. Although I didn’t ski as well as I had hoped it was so great to be racing! As I have mentioned in my past blogs, I am making some changes this year and unfortunately during the race I started to drop my hip while I was trying to get my hands where they are supposed to be which caused me to skid around my turns…let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

Thankfully, I have amazing coaches who let me know right away what I was doing and this week I am going to make sure I really work hard to fix this! The conditions here in the Northeast are pretty dismal. We have barely gotten any snow and if it wasn’t for the incredible snowmaking crew we probably wouldn’t be racing at all. I was really psyched to get a long board for Christmas – but I don’t want to be able to use it outside now! We need snow!!!!

My next race is Giant Slalom here at Stratton – can’t wait! Good luck to all my fellow racers out there. Have fun and ski fast!

.)) Paige Lorenze

Speed Week Time

Just finished up racing the FIS-Devo's and Waterville yesterday. I had a couple big mistakes here and their but I still ended up 18th and 20th. I scored a 90 and an 87 which would bring my average down into the 80's for NJR's (J2 National's qualifier) in February so that should be good. We as a team are switching gears from tech to speed as we head into 7 speed events over the next few weeks. The training has been good, cold weather has been brutal, I guess the only thing missing now is the snow. Good luck everyone!

.)) Kazui Kusumi

Snow-FIA Report: First Race

Hello everyone and Happy Late New Year! It's very exciting to know that this weekend is going to be my first race and it's slalom! The last couple of weeks my coaches have been hammering me and my teammates on slalom by having us skip some of our classes on Wednesday, leaving half day on Thursday, and also on Friday. Even though it's so much fun, it's also hard because of all the homework.

After all this slalom training, finally today we got on our Super-G skis and ripped some turns at Park City. One of my coaches Keely Kelleher who was a Super-G ace helped us with our gliding turns, tucks, and teaching us the patience we must have in order to make the perfect turn. Also, my other coach was using a speed gun and clocking our miles per hour, which was a lot of fun because we were hitting a least 50 mph. The next half of the day we went to the Olympic Park and trained some slalom on this little hill. We got really great training in, with a ton of laps, and I skied really great and some break throughs.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the week of training and this weekend for the first slalom and kombi race at Snowbird. PRAY FOR SNOW!!!!!!

.)) Sofia Yubero

Still no snow.... But the training goes on!

Here with an update from Park City. It was in the 50s all of last week so we lost a lot of snow but just yesterday we received three inches. Although it just meant more slip runs to push it off, no one was ready to complain. The granular man made snow and surprise rocks scattered around the runs are definitely taking a toll of my skis. I wish the storms in Austria would cross the Atlantic and come to Utah!

Our race arena at Park City opened last week. It rained the same day it was injected so it is nice and firm for training. Sadly, Christmas break is over so after a couple weeks of hard training, we are back to our regular training schedule. Only one more weekend of training before I am off to Jackson for the first Junior Champs qualifier!

.)) Molly Leavens

European Tour for Anna

Anna and a few select members of the Western Region team made their way to Europe over the New Years holiday, and after training at Solden, Austria for a few days they traveled to Morzine-Avoriaz, France for their first slalom event...

I did pretty well today - I started 29th, ended up 21st,  4th overall for J2s and all that with losing my goggles first run!

I have no idea how you lose your goggles in the middle of a slalom run but if I receive any enlightenment I will be sure to pass it on ;).

BTW there were 94 ladies in the field, with 66 finishers. Other notable stats are that Anna was the 3rd overall fastest US athlete out of the 9 ladies there, and the fastest J2 from the US. In time trials with the other D Team women she tells me she was running in about the middle of the pack, which is awesome.

The team schedule now looks like this:

Morzine Avoriaz & Chatel, France
1.3.2012 SL
1.4.2012 GS (canceled)
1.5.2012 GS (cancelled)

Temu, Italy
1.7.2012 GS
1.8.2012 GS

Zillertal, Austria 
1.13.2012 SL
1.14.2012 SL

Happy New Year everyone!

.)) Anna Mounsey

Aspen Ajax Cup!

2nd Place Team. Andrew on far left.

Last week I was lucky enough to get involved with a fundraiser ski race for the Aspen Valley Ski Club called the Ajax Cup, the Ski Club's biggest fundraiser of the year. It is a duel GS race on the bottom of Aspen Mountain.

There are 12 teams competing and each team is bought by a sponsor for $25,000. Each team has four "racers" and a captain chosen by the owner of the team, then the AVSC appoints a J2 or older racer and an adaptive racer to each team. Every team also gets either a US ski team athlete or a former pro on their team for a total of eight racers. Since the field varies from intermediates to US ski team members, they use a handicap system. Sometimes you get to leave the gate first and other times you have to wait in the gate and then try to catch the other racer; it just depends on who you are racing. The team I was on had US ski team member, David Chodunski; Bobby Moyer (AVSC J1), Vancouver Olympian Jake Zamansky's dad, Dave, and a few other people who were friends of the owner.

In our first round we did pretty well, I won my race. Then the second race we did just as well, I won again, so we were tied for 2nd. In the third and fourth rounds we got to race team Ochi. They had some good skiers but the most impressive part was that they had famous actor Antonio Banderas on their team. The third round we were on the red (slow) course and our team (including me) lost about half our races, putting us in sixth place. But in the fourth round we got to race them again on the blue (fast) course this time, our team won all eight of the mach-ups putting us back in second place. Before the fifth round they eliminated eight teams, leaving only the top four. The points reset and we went head to head in a playoff style, half of the people on one course and half on the other. I raced one of my teammates, Devon Cardamone. It was an intense race but he got whiplashed by a gate, and I prevailed with the win. That round was close but our team made it to the finals.

Unfortunately, in the final round two members of our team (who were both in the lead) fell right by the bottom giving the other team the win. So we got second place but it was really fun and everyone enjoyed themselves. At the after party, they gave away bottles of tequila for our second place team, but Bobby and I got gift cards for a popular restaurant in Aspen.

But it was a great experience that reminded me ski racing is about fun and the event raised $500,000 for the Ski Club.

.)) Andrew Hancock

Former SRD racer Mikaela Shiffin makes World Cup Podium!

A podium for Mikaela!

Charging to her second straight slalom podium, Tina Maze came in second, 0.79 seconds back, but the big story of the day is that of 16-year-old American Mikaela Shiffrin, who, after just starting to race on the World Cup this season, landed her first career podium in third, 1.30 seconds off the winning time and posting the fastest second run time (56.56).

“It’s a very good way to end the year,” said Schild of her final victory of 2011. “It’s nice to win at home. It’s amazing it always works out so well.” As is her way, Schild marked her territory early, leading Maze by 0.54 seconds going into the second run with a handful of others trailing by under a second. The Swiss course setting in the second run proved tricky for several racers, but not for Slovakia’s Veronika Zuzulova, who started 11th and posted the second fastest second-run time after Shiffrin, and spent a considerable amount of time standing in the leader’s box, finishing eighth.

In spite of being the 40th athlete to start on Thursday, Shiffrin, who posted an astonishing eighth-place result in the Aspen slalom, finished 12th in the first run. After her lightning fast second run, the teenager stood in the leader’s box for several minutes taking deep breaths and scarcely believing her success until she was mobbed by her teammates when it became clear that she had made the podium.

“I’ve been working for this almost my whole life,” said Shiffrin, who hails, like teammate Sarah Schleper who retired from the World Cup on Thursday (stay tuned for that story), from Vail, Colorado. “I’ve been watching all these girls – Marlies Schild, Kathrin Zettel, Lindsey Vonn, Nicole Hosp … I’ve been watching the top girls for the past 10 years, cheering them on, learning from their success. Now I’m here … and it feels really crazy.”

----- We are very proud of you Mikaela! Keep it up!

Not a very white Christmas....

We had our first race of the season! It was the Eric Hayes Memorial, a four-day open series race at Park City. The two weeks leading up to the race I was battling a cold so I decided not to race the first day to rest and save my energy for the other three days. Friday was the first day of racing for me and it was slalom. It was a night slalom under the lights so the girls first run did not start till one. The run is fairly flat and the courses are generally extremely straight, so for Eric Hayes, the most aggressive will win.

My first run had very good technical skiing but lacked slightly on the aggressive side of things so it put me in fourth. My nerves took over, causing me to be very tentative. I was so stressed in the start, I even forgot to put on my shin guards and ran without them. On my second run, it was only the fifth gate when I lost outside ski pressure and slid out, forcing me to hike. Saturday was the first GS and with a fourth on both runs, I finished in third. GS was not my best event last year so I am really happy with the improvements I have made. I am really loving the Head GS skies, which are new to me this year.

The next GS day ended similar to the slalom. I was sitting in fourth after first run but on my second run, I caught an edge on the first pitch and fell straight through the next gate. That time however, I was too far out to hike. Park City is a major tourist destination so the mountain is packed over Christmas. We have had a lot of early mornings in an attempt to avoid the crowds, but we are definitely limited with our free skiing. The runs without tourists are generally scattered with rocks. For most of my teammates, their next race is a super G followed by a GS and slalom the very next weekend so we are training all the events. I still can’t believe how quickly our first J3 JO qualifier is approaching! Today was my first day on my new 203 super G skis and they were a blast! They are so stable even at high speeds.

We had a very brown Christmas this year. Almost all our snow is man-made since we have practically no natural snow. The man-made snow is very grippy so is super fun to turn on but it’s wearing away and we are beginning to see grass poking out in our courses. We are all praying snow will come soon!

.)) Molly Leavens

The Fast Lane: Big Snow in AK!

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far and are enjoying the snow. We have just had our first FIS race series at Alyeska. It was lots of fun, many athletes traveled from different places to make up a great field.

We pulled off three races out of four before the weather turned, and we had to cancel the last GS race. I was happy with the way I skied, but left lots of room for improvement. I had a 10th and 12th place finish in Slalom. I was in 10th in the first run of GS and felt like I could move up a couple spots, but had some trouble in my 2nd run and ended up 12th. The three races improved my points, which was one of my goals so I am happy!

We are having a huge snow year in Alaska with several feet in the last couple of weeks. My team has been training hard over the winter break for our upcoming races. January will be a very busy month. I am planning on racing in the Mammoth speed series, then meeting up with some of my teammates from the Valle Nevado ski team from Chile, in Vail to train for about a week and practice my Spanish, before heading to Park City for some Tech races. I am very excited to compete in the races and hopefully will see some of you!

.)) Jordan Lane