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

Split Timing

Hey everybody! Hope you all are having an awesome ski season! I have a few results to share with you all...

Last week I competed in the Sun Cup held at Mt. Bachelor, OR. It was a speed series that included 2 Super G's and 2 Downhills. There was heavy snowfall for both the Super G's so running early was a pretty large disadvantage. I placed 5th in the first Super G and 1st in the second Super G! I was surprised by the win because I started second for that run, but I'll take it! The win scored me a USSA result of 62 points!! The downhill was very fun, and I placed 3rd and 5th, which lowered my points as well. I was second overall for the entire series (just barely out of first!).

In other news, I just got back from the Oregon State Championships for high school racing which ended yesterday. There were a lot of FIS/USSA racers there which made for some awesome competition! I was racing for my awesome high school of West Linn. I won both runs of the slalom which gave me the slalom victory. In GS, I was in 3rd after a very sloppy first run (0.5 seconds out of first) and on my second run I hooked my arm in gate and came to a complete stop. Unlucky, but I still managed to get 4th for GS! Pretty good for running 29th on very soft snow. Thanks to my large lead in slalom, I won state overall! My teammate McKenzie Burns won the overall for girls as well. West Linn Boys won the GS, SL, and Team overall, and West Linn got 3rd for the entire competition. Pretty awesome!!

I have Western Region Championships at Bogus Basin, ID on Tuesday the 8th, and I'm very excited to race there because the mountain is awesome!

Well that's all for now folks, hope you all are having as much fun this season as I am! See ya next time!

.)) Stephan Splitstosser

MORSE CODE: Skiins' the Reason

Earlier this past week I attend a National Development System Speed Camp at Okemo in Vermont.

This camp, put on by Alex krebs, brought together all the top J3's in the Eastern United States for a Super-G camp oriented towards speed and jumps. It was only a two day camp, but I think we all improved a lot. The first day was just free skiing the hill in the morning and then we did some sections of gates along the trail. There were two large jumps in the course, which made it very interesting. In the late afternoon of the first day we linked a couple of the courses together and hit the jumps with a little bit more speed, which made it for a little bit more air time, which was awesome.

At the bottom of the course we had a speed trap, I went pretty fast and was clocked with the radar gun going 70 mph. It was grrrreat! We also had a fun time running a wave track of rollers and we were even able to camel some of them. On the second day we had 4 timed runs. The first run I took a little detour and missed a gate, but I put it together for the 2nd run and beat the field by over a second. This camp was held on the trail called Chief, which offered a nice range of terrain.

This was a great camp and I cannot wait for some real downhill next year!!!

.)) Sam Morse

Burcin's Blog

I have done a lot of racing since my last blog. Most recently, I was racing NJR FIS races, which are the races that qualify you for J2 nationals. The GS series was at Whiteface, New York about 2 weeks ago. The first day I finished 25th overall and 9th for J2’s. The second day I finished 9th overall and 4th for J2’s. After that I headed over to Stratton, Vermont the next week for the slalom series. The first day I finished 14th overall and 6th for J2’s. The second day I dnfed on the first run. Overall I was pretty happy with both the series but there were definitely opportunities to ski faster. I qualified for J2 nationals as the 12th J2 from the East out of the 20 that were invited. I was really pumped that I accomplished one of my goals to make J2 nationals. It is being held in Sugarloaf, Maine, starting with GS on March 4th and goes through March 11th. It was also sweet that 2 of my other teammates also qualified so it will make the trip that much better.

Overall my season is going pretty well as I have gotten my FIS points down from the starting point of 990 to 70 gs and 76 sl points. I have also gotten a little more experience in speed. It has been a really fun season and I am looking forward to a fun and exciting end of the season. Good luck to everyone else!

.)) Kyle Burcin