The Bates Carnival was this weekend, and the Nordic team got off to a good start. We posted a lot of personal bests, and put in some very solid racing. The men are showing up as a threat much earlier on in the season this year, posting a 4th and a 3rd place for the team results, which is an improvement from last year's 5th and 6th place finishes. The women's results appear at first glance to be about the same as last years' (two 6th places, compared to a 5th and a 6th last year), but a closer look shows that the girls had generally much more impressive results than last year. The top girls, Natalis Ruppertsberger and Kirsten Gill for each respective day, placed higher than last year's top finishers. Our scorers were 9, 17, 22 and 13, 19, 20 for the two respective races (up from 17, 18, 20 and 20, 21, 23 last year), and the average place for the carnival team was 25th (up from 26th). So why are they only in sixth? The reason was that this year's field was much tighter, without as much dominance by a few schools: on Friday, there were six schools represented by the top ten women, and four in the top five on Saturday. The weekend's results make it pretty clear that both our men's and women's teams are stepping it up.
Saturday's mass start was absolute madness. The seeding by school, and the fact that it was a skate race made it a certainty that there would be some crashes. These factors were compounded by a very short, uphill double-pole section, that didn't cause the field to spread out even slightly. There was a ton of broken equipment, the most notable being Glen Randall's broken ski, that left him in dead last place by a lot after only the first hundred meters. Here are some photos from the weekend (sorry girls, I only have guys pictures). Everyone is getting fired up for next weekend at Jackson!
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