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SBA Nordic Ski Team, Bears this time, Not Dinosaurs |
SBA Team Nordic (parents, coaches, racers, fans, etc): take to Twitter!
With the season now underway, Alec Wiltz has stepped up to offer his services as official team...er...tweeter?
My many Marmot thanks to Alec for taking the lead on this. Alec has said he will be tweeting race results and color commentary (hopefully not TOO colorful, Alec) from the field, providing his insights into the race field, the conditions, results, whatever comes to the mind under that blond head of hair in 140 characters or less per tweet. And the tweets have already begun:
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A few guidelines if you're new to Twitter and want to take part:
*Text Message "FOLLOW SugarBowlNordic" (no quotes necessary) to 40404. After doing this, you will find that Alec's tweets will arrive to your cell phone - no need to go look for them on line.
*If you prefer to use your desktop or laptop to follow rather than your cell phone, go to http://twitter.com/SugarBowlNordic and hit "Follow" (if you don't already have a Twitter account you will have to sign up, I suppose...). You can also set up your account to send you mobile updates, and all that is quite user friendly.
*To build community and comment on Alec's posts, or those of others, I would encourage you to discover each other's user names and text "FOLLOW USERNAME" - always to 40404 - to start getting that person's text updates, as well, on your mobile phone.
*I would encourage you to add BOTH "@SugarBowlAcad" and "@SugarBowlNordic" in your tweets (which might just be a "good luck" wish before a race or a "congratulations" after a race) so that they are routed to both directions.
*I plan to add a @SugarBowlNordic Twitter badge on The Fighting Marmot blogspot, as well - that way folks can view what the Nordic community is tweeting.
NOW TO NORDIC NEWS
Moving on to Nordic news, Head Nordic Coach Jeff Schloss provided me the following insights into the team's trip to West Yellowstone over the recent holiday. I get cold just reading it:
Every year during Thanksgiving week, pretty much everyone in the North American Nordic racing world descends on the tiny town of West Yellowstone, Montana, for a huge week of training, serious Super Tour Races, and generally a celebration of all things Nordic.
The Sugar Bowl Academy team made the long 14-hour drive to West Yellowstone with members of the Auburn Ski Club Team and the Eastern Sierra Nordic
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Joe Piercy skate skiing |
Team, all of us under the umbrella of Far West Nordic. We were greeted by a huge amount of snow on the trails and frigid temperatures. The trails were in awesome shape and the SBA team did double training sessions for the first half of the week.
Mid week saw the day-time temperatures drop to minus 17 Fahrenheit! The second half of the week was devoted to Super Tour races where the SBA team were able to battle head to head against the best skiers in the US and Canada, including national team skiers, Olympic skiers, and most of the top college racers in the country.
The focus of the trip was definitely training and we did not rest up for the races but rather trained right through them. Even so, the fighting Marmots posted some outstanding results.
The most impressive results came from SBA Nordic Coach Chelsea Holmes who posted a 5th, 9th, and 11th against the best in North America. For the juniors, Austin Meng lit up the trails with an amazing 31st in the skate Sprint, which was the second fastest time of all of the older juniors.
Also impressive in the sprint race were Evan Dion with his best race result in three years - good enough for 17th junior -, Joe Piercy and Alec Wiltz cracking the top 20 for juniors, and Bria Riggs placing 42nd overall and top five for all j2 girls in the race.
The distance races included a 15k skate for boys where Austin again had a top performance showing he is among the top skiers in his age group in the country. Joe also fought through the slow snow for a 24th in j1 boys.
The classic race was a 10K for boys, and Alec was the top SBA finisher with a 20th for J1 boys, while Evan was close behind with a 24th for OJ’s.
The season has just begun and we are all ready for it.
My thanks, again, to Jeff, for his help in putting this together, and to Alec, for taking on some of the field commentary. Go Nordic!
