Fred Bailey

NENSA is excited to announce the host sites for the 2023 U16 Eastern Championships and Eastern High School Championships!

Eastern High School Championships will be held at Middlebury’s Rikert Nordic Center in Ripton, VT on March 10 – 12, 2023. Rikert has proven time and again that they can hold very successful races in March, including last winter’s Grand Prix and the 2016 EHSC.

The 2023 U16 Championships will be held at Fort Kent Outdoor Center in Fort Kent, ME on March 17 – 19, 2023. The FKOC did an amazing job hosting the 2020 Eastern High School Championships and we are thrilled to be working with them again on U16s in 2023.  The hosts are excited to share their world class venue and abundant natural snow with our speedy juniors!

Bidding for the 2024 championship events will take place in the winter of 2023.  New Hampshire venues will be targeted for EHSC and New York venues for U16 Champs.

And if anyone is missing winter and wants to relive last year’s events… you can watch the 2022 U16 Champs recap video HERE and the 2022 EHSC recap video HERE.

The Farmington Ski Club and Titcomb Mountain put on a great event for this year’s Eastern High School Championships, the region’s first since 2019.  Skiers from across New England, along with guest teams from the Great Lakes and Midwest regions, gathered for two days and three thrilling races.

An early spring arrival and subsequent melt down meant our host venue had to pull out all the stops to ensure the best conditions possible for the event with shovel crews tirelessly working to patch the courses.  Additionally, the mountain’s manager harvested snow from the alpine slope to bridge the gap between the cross country stadium and lower alpine slopes to make very exciting sprint and relay courses.  Titcomb Mountain very graciously closed their alpine activities to allow the best possible experience for our high school cross country athletes!

The first day of racing saw teams break out warm klister to combat the rainfall Mother Nature bestowed upon us.  The girls kicked off racing with a two lap 7.5km interval start classic race.  An hour and half later the boys took their turn on the same course.  This year’s event saw the inclusion of adaptive racer Otis Loga of Vermont who did a three lap rolling course that paralleled the able bodied course for the first race.  NENSA and Titcomb were thrilled and honored to have Otis compete in this Championship event.

Day two started with the girls XCX, a cross country sprint with terrain features, followed soon after by the boys.  The host venue was particularly excited and proud of this race.  They had manipulated the snow on the lower alpine slopes to create big banked turns, rollers, and a drop jump.  These were accompanied by a barrel turn, gates, blue paint, and an alternate line around the drop jump for those seeking less thrills but no one used the alternate line! Spring conditions made balance in the soft snow challenging, but the athletes took it in stride.  A large crowd of spectators gathered to watch the athletes climb to the high point and then descend through the features.  Many “ooohs” and “ahhhs” could be heard from the crowd as the skiers zipped by and a few entertained the crowd further with drop jump tricks.  Rounding out the sprint events for the morning was the adaptive race.  Otis received lots of cheering and camaraderie from the other athletes and state teams.

Following a lunch break racing action resumed with the freestyle relay.  Teams of four–two girls and two boys–from each state/region made their way around a 3.5km course with the first half in the woods and the second half on a watered down version of the XCX course.  One team included a mix between able bodied and adaptive racers with Otis skiing the anchor leg.  New this year was a tag less relay exchange where finishing athletes skied in a lane parallel to the starting athletes and had to cross a designated line before their starting teammates could cross their respective start line.  The format resulted in clean handoffs and no carnage in the exchange zone, a big change from years past! The relay saw another large crowd gather in the stadium and along the alpine slope to cheer on the athletes.  It was a welcome sight after two years of restricted viewing opportunities.

Below are the top-10 results for the individual races and the top-5 for the relay as well as the top-3 overall individual standings. While we are highlighting these finishes, we want to take a moment to acknowledge every athlete who stepped onto the start line this weekend and tried their hardest out there on the race course.

Girls 7.5km Classic

1. Hattie Barker, VT
2. Evelyn Walton, MA
3. Emma Charles, ME
4. Isabella Synnestvedt, MA
5. Catherine Stow, NH
6. Elsa Bolinger, NH
7. Francesca Kitch, MA
8. Isabelle Serrano, VT
9. Virginia Cobb, VT
10. Clara Lake, MA

Boys Adaptive 2.5km

1. Otis Loga

Boys 7.5km Classic

1. Ellis Slover, ME
2. Joey Rouhana, ME
3. Nate Livingood, ME
4. Samuel Murray, NH
5. Nico Hochanadel, VT
6. Evan O’Conner, GL-MW
7. Luke Rizio, VT
8. William Riley, NH
9. Nathan Doughty, MA
10. Tzevi Schwartz, VT

Girls 1.2km XCX

1. Evelyn Walton, MA
2. Hattie Barker, VT
3. Emma Charles, ME
4. Catherine Stow, NH
5. Clara Lake, MA
6. Francesca Kitch, MA
7. Mirra Payson, MA
8. Elsa Bolinger, NH
9. Elsa Granholm, NH
10. Julia Thurston

Boys Adaptive 1.2km

1. Otis Loga

Boys 1.2km XCX

1. Nate Livingood ME
2. Quinn McDermott, MA
2.  Ellis Slover, ME
4. Derek Waddick, GL-MW
5. Mitchell Townsend, NH
6. Luke Rizio, VT
7. Anders Linseisen, VT
8. Sam Folland, GL-MW
9. Lucas Daly, MA
10. Leo Circosta, VT
10.  Joey Rouhana, ME

Girls Overall

1. Evelyn Walton
1. Hattie Barker
3. Emma Charles

Boys Overall

1. Ellis Slover
2. Nate Livingood
3. Joey Rouhana, ME

Mixed Freestyle Relay 

1. VT 1: Maggie McGee, Luke Rizio, Hattie Barker, Tzevi Schwartz
2. MA 1: Isabella Synnestvedt, Nathan Doughty, Evelyn Walton, Quinn McDermott
3. VT 2: Virginia Cobb, Anders Linseisen, Rebecca Cunningham, Nico Hochanadel
4. VT 3: Emma Crum, Leo Circosta, Isabelle Serrano, Austin Beard
5. ME 1: Emma Charles, Nate Livingood, Nyla Scott, Ellis Slover

Congratulations to Team Vermont on winning the Graham Taylor Cup with the highest team score!

Results | Event Photos | Mount Blue TV Coverage

We want to take a moment to thank the Farmington Ski Club and Titcomb for preparing amazing courses this weekend and for hosting a fun event. We also want to thank our NENSA sponsors for their ongoing support of our Championship events, Eastern Amateur Educational Foundation (EASEF) for supporting athletes all across the East in attending EHS Champs, and BART Timing for timing. And last but not least, thank you to all the athlete and coaches for bringing your energy, enthusiasm, and love of skiing to this event!

It’s March and that means big Popular races in New England!  Here’s what’s on the docket for this weekend:

3/5 47th Annual Mt. Washington Cup Skate Race at Bretton Woods.  Registration link HERE.

3/5-6 Rangeley Loppet & Burt Kettle Classic at Rangeley Lakes Trail Center. Registration link HERE.

On the horizon:

3/13 Long Haul Loppet at JacksonXC. Registration link HERE.

3/13 2022 Inferno Cross Country Cross at Sugarloaf. Registration link HERE.

3/18-20 Rikert Grand Prix at the Rikert Nordic Center & Middlebury College Snow Bowl. Registration link HERE.

These events are great ways to get out and enjoy some of the best ski conditions of winter.  Bring your friends and family and have a great time!

Skiers gathered at the Stratton Nordic Center on a sunny morning for an event full of adventure, obstacles, and fun!  It was the first time the crew at Stratton put on the Terrain Challenge and they did not disappoint.

Dozens of Bill Koch aged skiers gathered for the early morning races.  They were started by Sverre Caldwell, who seemed to be having as much fun as the racers.  The first and second graders had a particularly good time with him as he challenged them with all sorts of false starts, eventually giving them the elusive “GO.”

The Bill Koch racers navigated one to four times around a 1km loop full of challenges, like slalom gates, saw horses to duck under, and hay bales to barrel roll over.  Of particular spectating interest was the wall of hay bales 100m from the finish.  Each skier had a different approach to getting over them, some stepping, some rolling, some crawling, and some trying to jump.

Once the Bill Koch races were done, the high school and adult racers had their chance at all the fun.  The adult 6km course included all the features of the 1km, breaking away after 500m, then winding uphill until the course suddenly dived off the groomed trails downhill on single track lines.  After a few seconds of old school exhilaration, skiers returned to the groomed trails, for another climb, followed by more single track and flowing groomed downhill action, interspersed with unexpected turns, bumps, and jumps.  Matt Boobar who was in charge of course set up, said “it’s a lot like a cycle cross race, with smooth flowy and technical sections.”  When asked if the course was anything ski Ski-Orienteering courses, Alex Jospe responded with a big smile.

It was not your typical cross country ski race.  The whole event had a playful tone.  There was a piece of candy awaiting all the racers at the finish – everyone got to feel like a lollipop racer.  Parents and participants in other age groups hung around and cheered on every racer, some even got to cheer on their parents.   Costumes and fun hair dos were also part of the day.  Steve Bruner of the Stratton Nordic Center said “this event was awesome – we can’t wait to do it again next year!”

Results

Rankings