Enjoy the April 25th KickZone eNews HERE
NENSA needs your donations | Club Challenge | 14 NE athletes qualify for the National U16 Camp is July | Summer Calendar updates
Amie Smith · ·
Enjoy the April 25th KickZone eNews HERE
NENSA needs your donations | Club Challenge | 14 NE athletes qualify for the National U16 Camp is July | Summer Calendar updates
Justin Beckwith · ·
The National U16 Camp Announces Selections and Program for Summer 2019
The tenth edition of the US Skiing National U16 Camp will be held Monday, July 22, 2019 (arrival day) to Monday, July 29, 2019 (departure day) at College of St Scholastica. The NU16 camp brings together the top U16 Boys and Girls from across the USA for a week of intensive training and ski sport education as one of the first steps in the US Skiing National Development Pipeline. The camp rotates in location throughout the country and this year’s camp will be held at the College of St Scholastica in Duluth, MN. The greater Duluth region offers ideal training venues in a beautiful natural setting. US Ski Team staff will lead the camp along with a selection of top regional coaches from across the US. Selection for the camp is based on results from this year’s US Junior Championships, held in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition to the top twenty boys and top twenty girls selected via JN results, each USSA Division is afforded two discretionary picks of one boy and one girl (must have competed as a U16 last season).
NENSA is proud to announce that the following athletes have qualified for this opportunity:
Girls:
Ava Thurston – Mansfield Nordic
Sofia Scirica – CSU
Elsa Bolinger – Ford Sayre
Quincy Massey-Bierman – Craftsbury/MNC
Camille Bolduc – Craftsbury
Evelyn Walton – CSU
Clara Lake – CSU
Boys:
Trey Jones – GMVS
Aidan Burt – Mansfield Nordic
Mathias Boudreau-Golfman – Stratton Mountain School
Jack Lange – Ford Sayre
Sam Murray – Ford Sayre
Elvis McIntosh – Frost Mountain
Evan Nichols – Ford Sayre
In addition we are pleased to announce that Kathy Maddock, Dublin XC, will accompany our New England U16’s as our regional coach.
Congratulations to these athletes — we look forward to seeing your reports from camp!
Amie Smith · ·
NENSA has been given a wonderful opportunity! We have a member who has offered us a Donation Challenge!!
If 100 more people donate to our April Fund Drive, NENSA will receive $5000! If 150 more people donate, we will receive $7500!
Please DONATE today ~ (minimum donations of $25 and above will count toward this challenge)
So far, 29 folks have donated to NENSA this month for a total of $8575. We still have a long way to go to meet our annual $50k goal.
With 2263 NENSA members ~ I know we can do this! Please take a moment out of your day today to make a donation to our Annual Fund and keep all the great NENSA programs you love and count on around for next season too!
So tell your friends, and be a part of making these additional funds in our Donation Challenge happen for NENSA! All it takes is $25 (feel free to give more if you can!)
Amie Smith · ·
Check out all the latest news HERE with the April 17th edition of KickZone eNews ~
You can DONATE to our April Annual Fund, see photos and read all about the Cochran’s Nordic Cross Race, buy one of the NENSA/SKIDA women’s day hats, place a BID for hosting an Eastern Cup, Zak Cup or Marathon next season, find out some important updates as of 4/15/19 to SafeSport Code and program, and check out all the upcoming events and camps on our calendar listings.
Justin Beckwith · ·
On April 7th Cochran’s Ski Area, in Richmond, Vermont hosted their 5th annual Nordic Cross event. Registration was closed after 200 competitors signed up! The event always draws a diverse field with top collegiate and club racers (more than a handful with international experience), juniors, masters and local legends of both XC and Alpine skiing in attendance. Although each addition of the event has grown, this year there was an explosion of energy, both in the course design and participation. For 2019 skiers were enticed to try the “pond jump” and a set of five “whoops” that increased both the challenge of the course and the excitement for spectators. Perhaps more impressive than the terrain was the turnout — the once local race has now become a regional phenomenon.
2019 Cochran’s Nordic Cross Video
Although the Cochran’s race is held on an alpine mountain, with its start at a higher elevation than the finish, the course is just as demanding aerobically as it is technically. The combination of fast descents and solid climbs create a brutal demand on the legs. At the finish it is quite common to hear racers exclaim, “That was the hardest race I did all YEAR!” And that’s a lot to say for a eight to ten minute effort.
While the Cochran’s event is a celebration of the season and the skiing community there is no doubt that skills are being learned by all the competitors. Many chose to wear costumes to disguise their intents – but it’s fair to say all the racers gave it their all in search of bragging rights or just to push their personal boundaries! All fun aside, Cochran’s event is quite relevant in the current state of cross country skiing and the skill of New England skiers are certainly some of the best in the US and perhaps the world. This year we saw terrain features popping up at many of our touring centers and Cross events have now been a part of the BKL Festival, U16 and Eastern High School Championships. NENSA strongly supports this format and hopes that it will continue to help skiers develop technical skills, and draw attention and new participants to our sport.
Cross Country Cross, or the addition of exciting terrain and obstacles into a traditional ski course, is slowly creeping it’s way into mainstream. In May of 2017 FIS published guidelines to try and define this exciting development:
Cross-Country Cross is a competition where competitors compete on a cross–country ski
course that includes both traditional and non-traditional elements such as natural and
artificial terrain features, corridors, obstacles and tight turns, as well as different natural or
artificial types of turns, jumps, waves and other skiing terrain features or obstacles.
Blog from Mansfield Nordic: Why Nordic Cross Matters
Our hats are off to Pennie Rand and Cochran’s Ski Area for helping push the level of skiing forward! We can’t wait to see what 2020 holds!!