New from Kazui

Hey everyone,

A lot has happened since the last time I blogged. I had two days of States at Okemo Mountain which turned out to be quite a crazy experience. The first day I had three slalom runs. The race started off okay but the snow conditions were very soft.

The girls course was separate than the boys and I started 4th so it was very soft. I couldn't race the SG because of my ankle injury so I tried to lay a solid top 5 run to assure one run for JO's. I was coming down the course and I felt like I was skiing very poorly but when I came down I wound up in 3rd. Its not like I was the only one skiing the soft snow so it wasn't that big of an issue. But the next two runs, I was putting together solid runs but fell down below on the flats.

I ended up getting an 11th and a 48th which really didn't help for a good seed for JO's. The next day was GS. I was pretty fired up about the race because we got to run the same course after the girls so the course would be a little harder. I was having a pretty decent run until I hip-checked midway through the course.

The second run I basically did the same exact thing but fell just a bit farther down and lost valuable time. I ended up 9th both runs which I wasn't really happy about. It got me into JO's overall as 9th place. So in the end, I wasn't really happy about my performance at States but considering the fact that I fell 4 out of 5 runs, I did get myself into JO's and hopefully I can do well! I still have two more weeks to work on my skiing until JO's happen, once again at Okemo.

I have a lot of room for improvement and I know I can get faster. I can't wait to get started on those USSA spring series races to get my points down. Good luck to everyone!

.)) Kazui Kusumi