Championship Stories
3.26.02
From a racer’s view
By Sara Ellen Godek
The day was beautiful and the team got out of school after first period. We all met at the bus pull around and Monica was late, so was I. We loaded the bus and sat in the back. Monica and I took pictures of “before the race” and of Alexei reading the newspaper. That was funny. The road to the Sandwich cross-country trails was bumpy and you would jump out of your seat when you went over a bump.
When we got there Didi, Lizzy, Alex, Ian, Monica, Karianne, and I went to preview the relay course. Alex and Ian would be on a mixed team and Lizzy would also be on a mixed team. That left Didi, Karianne, Monica, and I to race for our school as a team. I raced first and got us off to a good start. We were skating and when I came in to the last corner and I thought I would run into Didi because I had to tag her. Didi was slower and put us behind and Didi tagged Karianne. Karianne didn’t get us ahead but then Karianne tagged Monica and Monica got us into second place.
We ate lunch and then got ready for our race. It was a classical race and it went off in heats of five girls every thirty seconds. Monica was in the first heat and I was in the third heat with Anna-Maria and she was just a little faster than me and I stayed behind her the whole time. The race was a mess up because they forgot to tell people where to go so some girls skied 1k, 4k, or 5k. The boys’ race was right after our mess up race so the girls would go again after the boys. Alex did well but his ankle was hurting because of skiing classical and Ian did well too. We (the girls) rested awhile while the boys finished. Finally we got to race once again. This time the course was very well marked and since we had raced a 4k before that race the officials cut the course down to 3k. I again stayed behind Anna-Maria for the whole race. Towards the end of the race I was going slow and now I know where I could have done better and faster.
After the race we had a scavenger hunt to do. That was to find officials and get a sticker from them. We did this because we had to wait for the race results to come in. Everyone waited, and waited. The boys’ times were up first and Alex got 4th and Ian got 15th. The times of the girls’ race were slow in being posted and everyone thought that maybe that they had screwed up the girls’ times and we would have to race the race all over again. Finally the times were posted and Monica came in 1st, I came in 5th, Karianne was 20th, Didi was 21st, and Lizzy came in 28th. I have a feeling that Didi and Lizzy will do a whole lot better next year because this was only their first year and they did phenomenal. I hope that next year I’ll get maybe second or first but we’ll see. Overall the Gilford girls got 2nd place as a team. That was exciting and we got a trophy sort of thing that said we were the 2nd place girls’ team in New Hampshire. We want to hang it up in the school for everyone to see.
Thanks Alexei for waxing our skis and helping us at practice! You were the best coach! Everything was so much fun, I can’t wait until next year!
3.22.02
Eastern High School Championship 2002
By JC Freer
Easterns
Now I might not be the best skier in
the world, but I can still say that the Easterns were a fun circuit of races.
There were some ups and downs to staying in the same hotel as the coaches, one
of them is that they wake you up at least an hour before you even have to go to
breakfast, but that's not what the Easterns are all about. The Easterns are also
suppose to bring all of the kids from each state together and to socialize, they
even set up a dance for everyone together. This dance was a good idea but
turned out to be a few people in room 280 dancing to the music of a portable cd-player
and mini-speakers. Considering the amount of snow the courses were good other
then the fact that the snow was well.....brown. All our the coaches of the New
Hampshire team felt that it was necessary to take the whole team out before the
sprints and to ski the 6k individual course before
the sprints. Now that would of been a good idea if they new where the course
went, but sadly they didn't so the whole team of 40+ people skied around
amolosly for one hour following no specific path, but at least it was
a good idea.
As some of you who are reading this
have heard the Russian team did appear at these races as guests as well as at
the j2-festival. They did very well and received medals for what they achieved.
I might not of done that well in the races at all but it was a very good
experience and I know what to expect for the races next year, I had a very good
time and hope everyone will eventually get to go