Another perfect day for ski racing--sun and firm conditions and at our mountain. I said this last week, but we don’t always get such perfect conditions.

We didn’t win all four today, but we weren’t that far off either, which is an improvement from last week. VW won and VM took second place to Nevada Union (NU). Overall, we came in second to NU in the combined by 1 point, as the women beat NU women by 12 points, and the NU men beat our men by 13 points. So close!

Slalom is a challenging discipline and there are more falls and disqualifications (e.g., missing a gate) than in giant slalom. We had our tumbles and miscues today. That is part of ski racing.

The coaches still feel like we are playing catch up with our training given the slow start to the season. So, racers don’t be hard on yourself if today didn’t go as you hoped. For many of you, you had only 1 day of SL training ever. When you think of it that way, you all should be proud of how brave you were to participate in a race!

Highlights (not all):

· Varsity women placed 5 in the top 11 with Madeline winning the race by ~ 2 seconds, and strong performances by Reese 4th, Olivia 5th, Josie 9th, and Raisa 11th.

· Junior Varsity women also won with Davis taking the top 3 spots, with Mikayla 1st, Whitney 2nd, and Lulu 3rd (Whitney and Lulu were separated by 13 hundredths of a second over two runs).

· Varsity men improved from last week placing 2nd.We placed 3 in the top ten, with Martin 3rd , Zach 9th, and Eli 10th and 7 in the top 20. Nice work!

· Junior varsity men won with Zach (1st), Rhys(2nd) and Jackson (4th).


Thank you to the gatekeepers and all of our volunteers. Gatekeepers — nice work with the drawings; they are very important for the coaches when determining if a racer disqualifies. We really appreciate all that you do for the team.