Sean

Newly-crowned RMISA GS Champ Sean Alexander

Sean Alexander is the team captain of the UAA men's alpine team. He's the undisputed team leader. This is his fifth year at UAA.  He was an NCAA All-American his freshman year, but then he injured his knee and had to redshirt a year to recover, and he assistant-coached a year, too, somewhere in there. Sean has had a multitude of roles with the team, from biggest point-scorer to mentor, to head video analyzer to team grandpa. This weekend is the RMISA Championships, and Sean's last RMISA races before next week's NCAA Championships. Though he's been close many times to getting an NCAA podium result, he's never quite been in the top three.  Until today.  Sean won his first college race this afternoon and is the 2016 RMISA giant slalom champion, and he did it on the Birds of Prey world championship race hill. I wish I'd been up there in person to see him do it.

Our results on the cross-country course were mediocre today.  We found out during the van ride back from the race venue that Sean had won, and it immediately became the only topic of conversation.  Congratulations, Sean Alexander!

As for us, we raced 5km / 10km skating today.  Beautiful weather, a challenging course, a well-organized race.  Our results were middle-of-the-pack.  We're hoping for improvement tomorrow. Here are a few photos:

Mack

Toomas

Mario

Etienne

The Fonz

The Von

This evening, it was time for the RMISA end-of-the-year banquet, held halfway up the Beaver Creek ski hill:

Mario and Hanna during our gondola ride to the banquet.

All of us: Etienne, Hanna, Luca, Mackenzie, Pati, Casey, Sara, Andrew, Sadie, Marcus, Mario