New England Nordic Ski Association

The Home of Cross Country Skiing in New England

Fred Bailey

Quarry Road Opener 2022

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High School Boys in action at the Quarry Road Opener – Heidi Lange photo

Skiers flocked to this year’s Quarry Road Opener to kick off the winter racing season.  Despite no natural snow, the organizers at Quarry Road put together a ribbon of artificial snow for the ski community to enjoy.  Rain on Saturday made way for blue sky and sunshine during the Opener.  This year’s course was very similar to 2021, but was run in the opposite direction.  Racers set out in 15 second intervals in groups of 20 to minimize congestion on the short loop.  It was a dizzying affair of laps, with athletes needing to keep a careful count to ensure they skied the correct distance.

Luci Anderson of UNH navigating the 180 – courtesy of flyingpointroad

This year’s field of racers surpassed 150!  It spanned all ages and abilities.  There was a large group of collegiate skiers with Harvard and UNH making the longer drive to compete against Bates, Bowdoin and Colby athletes.  It was great to see a growing number of local high school programs including Edward Little, York and Spruce Mountain mixing it up with the likes of Gould Academy and the Quarry Road Ski Club.  New this year was the addition of Para Nordic racers.  Two ParaNordic racers made the trip to Quarry Road to wet their appetite for fast gliding on snow.  The timing of their starts allowed them opportunities to race alongside the able-bodied athletes.

Heather Galeotalanza flying on her sit-ski – courtesy of flyingpointroad

Late in the day the middle school racers had their turn to have their fun in the sun.  The final race of the day saw bunch of particularly speedy lollipoppers cruising around the Quarry Road meadow, with big smiles!

Lollipop skiers eagerly waiting to start – Fred Bailey photo

Results

Scoring

flyingpointroad photos

NENSA photos

Up next racing action moves from Maine to Craftsbury, Vermont for the Silver Fox Trot, hosted by the Ford Sayre Ski Club on Saturday December 1oth. Here’s the LINK to register.

 

 

Event Organizer and TD Training Seminar

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Hands on practice at the Quarry Road Opener – Heidi Lange photo

This year’s Event Organizer and TD Training Seminar was held over the weekend in Waterville, ME.  We kicked off the seminar with presentations at the Chace Community Forum (housed in Colby’s new downtown dormitory on Main Street).  The content of this year’s presentations was markedly different from years past, with heavy focus on how we work together to be even better event hosts.  Highlights from the presentations include Mary Anne Levins speaking to her experience as a Race Secretary and Ed Despard of Bullittiming on all the new updates in the world of timing.  The key takeaways from these presentations:

“The Race Secretary and Chief of Timing are the problem solvers that keep Timer and Race Jury appraised of the all the event’s behind the scene’s communications.”

“Keep your timers happy, they are under a lot of pressure to produce quality results and they are the first to be blamed when something goes wrong”

“Things always don’t go according to plan at a race – the better prepared your race staff is, the less the public will notice the mistakes.”

We discussed how we include ParaNordic athletes in our events.  The easiest thing we can do is add a category for them at registration.  The next step is to reach out to the athletes that register for that category and have a conversation with them about their goals for the race and invite them to preview the course with you.  As we move toward greater inclusion, think of ways that they can be safely incorporated into the start order so that they have the opportunity to ski with able bodied skiers.

Presentations in the Chace Community Forum – Heidi Lange photo

On Sunday our focused shifted to hands on experience at the Quarry Road Opener.  Participants were asked to move around to different tasks and learn at each one.  These included shadowing the Race Secretary, Timer, the start crew, event setup, and observing how athletes navigated the course.  The format of the day allowed for lots of dialogue and the chance to make observations without feeling the pressure of hosting the event.  There were 27 event participants this year, including four timers and several virtual attendants.  Those that attended in person really enjoyed the face-to-face interactions!

 

Event Organizer and TD Training Seminar this Weekend

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NENSA is pleased to announce that we are collaborating with the Quarry Road Ski Club to host the annual Event Organizer’s and Technical Delegate and Training Seminar at Quarry Road Trails in Waterville, Maine.  The event will occur December 3rd & 4th, starting at 11:00am on the 3rd to accommodate longer driving times.  Please note that the seminar will begin at the Chace Community Forum in the Alfond Commons (driving directions, parking map, & birds eye view map shows the entrance to the Chace Forum). Quarry Road has been working their snowmaking magic to ensure we have skiable snow for the event as well!

 

Highlights of this year’s seminar will include training for Race Secretary, Chief of Timing, start crew, as well as presentations on modern chip timing needs and Quarry Road’s first decade of snowmaking operations.  For the Sunday session, we have the unique opportunity to have live practice as race organizers at the Quarry Road Opener race.  This is a low key event that will allow us to observe and practice what we learned/discussed the previous day.  We have lots of talks/conversations and hands-on activities to help us all become better event organizers and officials!

 

Here is the event agenda for those wanting a little more detail.

 

Here is the link for event registration (note the registration deadline is Thursday 12/1 at 8:00pm):

NENSA 2023 Championship Event Sites Announced

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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.

 

 

2022 Eastern High School Championships Recap

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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!

Thank you to our valued NENSA Partners