Sometimes, things need to wash away in order for you to begin anew.
What a fine aphorism to begin the ski season on.
But a rainstorm sucks. And a rainstorm is what greeted the 2025-26 Eastern Cup season on Friday.
Still, cross country skiers are used to thinking in cycles. You do a winter sport, in step with nothing more than the cosmos themselves. The snow piles up and you push hard and then no matter how big a winter, it all washes away come Spring.
Likewise, the results start to fade from memory, and the connections made each winter draw a little more slack.
Then comes the anticipatory attunement to each and every sign of winter, and what’ll happen when it all comes anew. You attune your training, you move through the seasons, and sure enough, the winter comes.
But again, for all that you try to philosophize your way out of it, a rainstorm sucks.
So, what did the rainstorm leave for skiers on the first day of the Eastern Cup season? A sunny snow, a race, and a special tinge among everyone present grateful that a new Eastern Cup season was underway, and thank goodness for that.
To quote a comment from Stratton Mountain School Head Coach Alex Jospe right as the lights were about to turn on deep into Saturday’s skate sprint day, “the first Eastern Cup day just might be my favorite day of the year.”
Within that is a truth about how the seasons, the rainstorms, and everything can almost make you forget about the smiles, the community, the racing, and the scene that the ski season brings, and then it’s all happening. This weekend at Holderness, it all happened. The trailers moved in and the tents went up. A hardworking Holderness crew coalesced around the hard work that Erin Waters, Pat Casey, and Peter Hendel have been doing for months, the paths crossed, and skiers pushed themselves, and each other, to the soundtrack of one very big MNC soundbox, old friends, new ones too, and made it all sing out with winter joy.
As the last racers wound their way into the finish line to meet a solstice sunset on Sunday, the memories of the rain on Friday seemed to have been drenched in another season. Winter was here, went away, and started again. At Cheri Walsh, the ski community did everything it could to get into the right tracks. Now we’re there striding into the perfect set trail ahead.
Here’s to a ski racing season, started anew.
Thank You to Everyone for Making the Fischer Cheri Walsh Memorial Eastern Cup a Success!
NENSA and the Ski Community would like to send special thanks to:
- Holderness Program Director Erin Waters – Erin stepped into organizing her first Eastern Cup with poise, patience, and energy! Thanks to Erin’s hard work, skiers from across New England have a strong platform to push into the winter together.
- Holderness Coach Pat Casey – Among other responsibilities, Pat made sure to dream up the terrain features on Saturday. It’s a good bit of metonymy on the careful attention he gives as a coach to how races can be used to stress specific aspects of skier development.
- Holderness Coach and Standby Peter Hendel – Thirty years into hosting Cheri Walsh races, Peter continues to make sure that they are an opportunity to coalesce the entire Holderness community around a love of ski racing.
- Daryn Slover who captured 2 fine days of racing through his camera, and supplied the pictures here!
- The Holderness Volunteers!
Daryn Slover Photos:
Saturday Skate | Sunday Classic
Got more Photos? NENSA is always looking to feature talented sports photographers from across our community. Send a message to Ben Theyerl, ben@nensa.net, to get your photosets from the weekend out to the ski community!
