Soldotna Star

Last weekend, most of the team stayed in Anchorage to catch up on schoolwork and rest after the first major road trip of the college season. But Sadie Fox drove a couple hours south to her hometown of Soldotna to race in the second of three sets of races in the Besh Cup series. Sadie's skiing stronger and faster this winter than I've ever seen her before, and last weekend was no exception. She finished second in the sprint race and then she won the 5k race on Sunday.  Congratulations Sadie!

Going Dutch

Andrew flew to the Dutch City of Amsterdam yesterday, where the American U18 team had a layover on their way to Norway.

Meanwhile, I flew to the village of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands but when I tried to fly back home again in the afternoon, my flight had a mechanical problem so I got waylaid overnight. Now Bogoslof Volcano is erupting nearby, sending a cloud of ash our way, and all flights out of Dutch Harbor have been postponed indefinitely. So it remains to be seen whether it will be Andrew or whether it will be I who will return to Anchorage first.

This is not Dutch Harbor...

...You can tell because Dutch Harbor does not have this many bicycles.

And this is not Holland.

It Was Pretty Cold At Practice Today

About negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit at Kincaid Park.

Taking a quick drink break mid-workout

Zacke, Andrew, Pietro

There's still no warmth in the sun at noon, but in just a few weeks we'll start to be able to feel the warmth of the sun again!

Sorry!

I know you think Freshman Natalie is some kind of superskier because she was raised on the muddy banks of the Yukon River and because she qualified last week to represent Canadia (again) at the World Junior Championships. And of course you're right. She is. 

But it hasn't always been this way. There was a time when Natalie used to fall down just like you and me. A time when she didn't use ski poles because she didn't know how. 

For example, in this picture, which one do you think is Natalie? The one standing up?  You might think so, but Natalie is actually the one crashed out in the tracks. Her friend would have passed her and kept going, but she's also Canadian. Thus, she's too polite to pass. She'll just wait patiently until Natalie gets up and then they'll apologize to each other before continuing on.

(In case you were wondering, this is another in the "Name the Seawolf" contest series, but naming the Seawolves was obviously too difficult because thus far nobody has been able to name a single Seawolf (as evidenced by the complete lack of any guesses in the comment section). So now I'm just naming the Seawolves myself.)

Relay Recon

Skippy, Tommy and The Von probably won't believe this (because they've only experienced one winter in Alaska and it was a no-snow disaster) but we're having a normal winter weather-wise. After the past couple of miserable winters, the past week has felt like being transported back in time to the good old days when it used to snow around here. It's been wonderful!

The UAA Ski Team returned from Montana this evening, and I bet they were psyched to see the snow when they landed at Anchorage International. I spent the afternoon in Girdwood, doing reconnaissance of next month's Seawolf RMISA race course. 

Kincaid Park

Kincaid

The Anchorage Hillside

Girdwood - site of next month's Seawolf college relay

The snow stake said there is 3.5 feet of snow.

I didn't know what was about to hit me...

I think some snow went down my collar.

Upper Moose Meadows in Girdwood

The meadows.

World War Three

The UAA Ski Team has spent the past week racing in the Utah Invitational college ski races, which also happened to be the US National Championships. Thus, the races served as the qualifying races for big international ski races like the World Ski Championships, the World Junior Championships, the World Under-23 Championships and a high-level racing opportunity in Norway for juniors in the Under-18 age class.

When the dust settled, we found out that half our UAA women's team will be heading back to Soldier Hollow in a few weeks for some championship racing. They may be teammates here on the UAA Ski Team, but they'll be at each other's throats at the World Championships because they're all racing for different countries.

Hailey Swirbul qualified to race for the USA in the World Junior Championships. This won't be her first time. She raced in the World Juniors two years ago in Kazakhstan.

Natalie Hynes will be representing Canadia at World Juniors. This won't be her first time either. She raced at World Juniors last year in Romania. You can hear an interview she did this week with someone from Canadia (I could tell by the way the interviewer said "been" and "again") here at this link.

Casey Wright will be racing for Australia in the Under-23 World Championships. This will be her first time at U-23s, but definitely not her first big championships. Long before she first laid eyes on Alaska, she'd been traveling around the world racing at multiple World Juniors in Italy and the Czech Republic, World University Games in Italy and even the adult World Championships in Sweden. So this will be nothing new for Casey. Here she is with her brother Abe, who was also in Utah last week. Did Abe race?  Did he qualify for something?  I haven't the slightest idea and it's not my job to find out. This is the UAA Ski Team Blog, not the Wright Family Blog.

Additionally, Andrew has been selected as one of the coaches for the US Under-18 team that'll be doing some racing at the Knyken racing trails near Orkanger, Norway. You can read all about the event here and here.

Here's coach Andrew Kastning with some of the Alaskans whom he'll be guiding around Norway later this month. (That's Molly Gellert, Gus Schumacher, Canyon Tobin and Luke Jager.) By all accounts, this is a great group of kids, which should give Andrew a nice break from the shenanigans he has to put up with around here on this team.

Natalie, Skippy and Hailey. Championship-bound.

Note: Former UAA Seawolf Lasse Moelgaard-Nielsen will also be in Utah, coaching the Danish team at World Juniors. He claims that the Danish team will not have any women there, which will allow him to cheer for our UAA skiers on the final big hill in Soldier Hollow. My advice to our Seawolves is do what Lasse says! He skied the last two kilometers of the 2011 RMISA Championships as well as anyone's ever skied two kilometers of any ski race and wound up second behind his teammate Lukas. If you do it the way Lasse did on that day, you'll be doing it right!

From Wisconsin With Class

If you're familiar with the 2007-2008 UAA Ski Team, you'll be glad you checked the blog today.

Kyle in 2008

Kyle in 2016

Also 2016

Kyle today

Extremist

I'll admit I don't know Hailey that well yet. She's only been in Alaska for a few months. I've missed a lot of UAA Ski Team training sessions this fall due to my rigorous vacation and leisure schedule. And we haven't gone on any road trips together yet. But from my interactions with Hailey thus far, I am getting the impression she is someone who dives fully into her chosen vocation. It seems to me she either commits fully to the thing that she's into, or she doesn't bother wasting any time with it. Maybe I'm wrong about this. But this is my impression so far. 

For one thing, Hailey's got herself a 4.0 GPA in the classroom (like many others on this team). That requires full engagement. Congratulations, Hailey!

(I don't know every ski pole on the market, but I'd recognize those poles anywhere. Those are Kermas with "corrective angle". You don't use Kerma corrective angle poles if you're not serious about your skiing. Classic ski poles for a classic ski jump: the timeless "spread eagle".)

She's way into it now, but Hailey hated cross-country skiing when she was growing up. So there are no photos of her using the misery sticks when she was a young child. But that's not surprising when you consider that Hailey's from Aspen, Colorado. Aspen is famous for its alpine skiing, and home to one of the most iconic ski hills in the USA. It's not the kind of place to look if you're looking for cross-country skiers, so Hailey's kind of an anomaly. (It should be noted here that the best distance skier in America, Noah Hoffman, is from Aspen. And America's best sprinter, Simi Hamilton, is also from Aspen. So it could be argued that the best XC skiers in the USA are from Aspen, Colorado.) 

Portraits

Skiwolves have got all four hemispheres covered today in the news, as Sadie Bjornsen ('09) finished third in today's Tour de Ski stage in Italy, and everyone in Australia is talking about all the things they didn't (but now do) know about our Skippy.

(Click the photos for the links)

Land of Champagne Powder

There's a gold star for any freshman skier except Hailey who can figure out where I went skiing yesterday.

Rocky Mountain High

If you know this Seawolf as well as I do, then you know what he's thinking in this photo. He's thinking: "I'm not sure what the story is with the curve on the end of this baseball bat, but I think I'll be able to lay down a pretty good bunt with this thing."

Nothing warms my heart like a family spending a day together on Atomic skis. Not sure where this picture was taken?  Check the mountain in the background. There aren't many places in the world with those aspen groves and high alpine meadows.

In the intense springtime sun where this Seawolf grew up, he needed a good pair of sunglasses to avoid scorching his retinas.

Always fired up to go skiing. Nothing has changed.