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| Getting the US Ski Team jacket! |
The first day was spent at the Center of Excellence physical testing. Along with basic medical information, they tested our overhead squat technique, our triple jump length, 60 second box jumps and the beep test. Unfortunately, I was unable to do the beep test and the box jumps because of my injured ankle. The first day on snow was the GS race. This was the first race all season I have had no pressure to finish. Almost all my races are qualifiers for another race. At this race, however, I had absolutely no pressure to perform. I put it all out there and won the race. I have always believed in my abilities but because of all the adversity I have had the past few seasons and how little I have trained, my result far exceeded any expectations I had going into the race. After the race, we did SkillQuest. We were given specific drills to perform and then rated on a scale of 0-10 on how well we executed them. Drills included one skiing, jumping over poles while skiing, pivot slips and hop jumps. SkillQuest is done in hopes of motivating younger athletes to strengthen their fundamentals. The US Ski team is not only looking for how fast you currently are, but also how strong your fundamentals are so you can still perform at a top level several years from now.
The next was a slalom race. I had a solid first run. However, on my second run, I was late coming out of a tight hairpin so had to throw my skies sideways and stop to get back on line. The hairpin was at the very beginning of a long flat so I had lost all momentum. Since many other girls also had significant mistakes, I still finished in second for the race. We did SkillQuest after the race again. Thursday was spent at Snowbird. The purpose was for the coaches to see us ski outside a racecourse. We were given tasks to perform while skiing down a hill. One task included making slalom radius turns in our GS skis down a steep run with crud, ice, bumps and varying snow conditions. They were looking for balance and fundamentally strong skiing. They rated us on a scale of 0-10 for each run.
The last day was by far my favorite. We went to Deer Valley and had a duel tournament on their NASTAR course. The first run was to place us in position for the rest of the tournament. Then we raced our opponent 2 times (one time on each course). The winner moved on to the next round and the loser was eliminated. I won against 3 people before I got to semifinals. I lost the first run and won the second run but barely lost overall when the two times were combined. I then went into a consolation round to race for third place. Altogether, I had 11 race runs! As soon as you were done with one run, you had to immediately go back up for your next race. For semifinals, the race was run so quickly that we had to ride snowmobiles back up the race hill. The snow was very firm so the courses held up great. At the end, they gave awards for the top 3 performing girls and boys. World Cup points were given to each of the race winners as well as the top ranked free skiers and SkillQuest performers. 60% of the final result was the race results and the other 40% was the drills and free skiing. I had the most points for the racing portion but fell back to third overall when the free skiing and drills were mixed in.
The top 3 overall winners were given US Ski Team jackets and are going to train and race in Austria next January. I am so excited! I had so much fun at the camp not only on the snow but off it as well. I met tons of new girls from around the country and I was able to spend time with racers I met at NDS camps last fall and summer. All the coaches for the camp were US Ski Team coaches. It was a great opportunity to start building a relationship with them.
.)) Molly Leavens
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