Chasé

 Tuva Granøien has left us. It happened a long time ago. Last spring, actually. It was unavoidable. She was our graduate assistant coach. And she graduated. We had a lot of laughs, and I'm definitely going to miss traveling around the countryside with Tuva to ski races this winter!

But we all have to move forward. 

I assumed we would have a new Nordic assistant coach on board by mid-summer, but that didn't happen. And it didn't happen for most of this fall, either. But finally, a couple weeks ago, we found ourselves a new Nordic assistant coach, and he goes by the name of Chase High. Chase comes to our team straight off the Saint Scholastica ski team, where he competed at the NCAA Championships last winter, and got himself an accounting degree last spring. And a finance degree, too. 

One of these two characters is our new assistant coach.

Chase grew up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which is awesome because it probably means we'll all be bunking in his old bedroom every time we go there for college ski races.

Chase has only been hanging out with us for a couple of weeks so far, but we already like him a lot, and we're looking forward to lots of good times ahead!  Welcome to Alaska, Chase!

We Won The Alaska Cup!

Seeing as how there are two NCAA ski teams in Alaska, and seeing as how we tend to get snow pretty early around here, it only makes sense that we ought to have an early-season head-to-head matchup between the two Alaska NCAA ski teams. It's a good excuse for some tune-up races in November, and maybe it's also a good excuse for a little early-season trash talk. We call the UAA-UAF matchup The Alaska Cup. We go back and forth between Fairbanks and Anchorage each year. Last year, the Nanooks hosted the Alaska Cup. This year, it was our turn. (For further background research, see this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.)

Historically, UAF has won the Alaska Cup more than UAA has. I don't have all the statistics on hand, but I know we're behind them in the overall tally.  But this weekend, for the second year in a row, the Seawolves won the Alaska Cup!

Here are a few photos of Alaska Cup weekend, here in Anchorage.

Talking shop in the UAA Wax Room before Alaska Cup Weekend.

There was nothing wrong with the snow conditions at Kincaid Park.

Seawolves Ski Team satellite headquarters at Kincaid Park.

This was us yesterday.

Women's skate podium: Marit, Rosie Fordham (UAF) and Hedda. Men's podium (all Nanooks): Philipp Moosmayer, Ben Dohlby, Gabriele Rigaudo.

This was us today.

Girdwood

Racing was on our docket for this past weekend, at the Government Peak ski trails about an hour north of town. But our recent snowstorm hit Anchorage and Girdwood, south of town. It missed the Mat-Su Valley north of town. So the Government Peak races were canceled due to a lack of snow. In their place, we got together with Alaska Pacific University and University of Alaska Fairbanks for a couple of time trials. Saturday was 8km classic in Girdwood. Sunday was 9km skating at Kincaid Park. 

In terms of competitive fields, Saturday's race in Girdwood might be the toughest race we'll do all year. On the men's side, several APU skiers are headed off to Europe tomorrow to spend their winter on the World Cup circuit, including Gus Schumacher (who was seeded first yesterday, with just a measly two FIS points). And on the women's side, it's tough to find a faster skier than Rosie Brennan, the top-seeded skier in Saturday's race.

Deb Essex is running the show at the Girdwood Nordic Ski Club, and she's got tons of energy and enthusiasm. When we asked her if it would be OK if we had our time trial in Girdwood, she fired up the grooming equipment and set a classic track for us, and welcomed us with huge jugs of sport drink, hot cocoa, donut holes and pastries. She also brought Girdwood Nordic Ski Club hats for the podium finishers, and wool socks for everyone there that day. Deb and the Club went WAY above and beyond - she turned an early-season time trial into a bona fide ski race!  Thank you to the Girdwood Nordic Ski Club - it was a great way to start our racing season!

Check out some photos from Girdwood, below. Gunnar Knapp, the renowned (and retired) UAA economist, was out on the trails taking photos and he was kind enough to send a bunch of them to us.  All the good photos of our Skiwolves on the race course were taken by Gunnar. All of the blurry and poorly-framed ones were taken by me. 

That's Deb Essex on the right. She turned our little early season time trial into a bona fide ski race! Gus Schumacher is on the left.

Trond and Chase, waxing up the classic skis

Matt Seline. Ready to race!

Girdwood Nordic Ski Club, in case you were wondering where we were on Saturday.

Henry Skjønsfjell on the starting line.

Murphy Kimball

Ethan Eski

Hermod Bangstad

Parke Chapin

Erling Bjørnstad

Garrett Siever

Corbin Carpenter

Matt Seline

Henry

Hermod

Dashe McCabe

Hedda Halvari

Constance Lapointe

Alex Otto

Marit Flora

Marlie Molinaro

Here's APU Head Coach Erik Flora thanking Deb Essex for hosting us all in Girdwood. Thanks Deb!  And thanks to the Girdwood Nordic Ski Club!

Typical Friday

 This team frequently gets together multiple times per day for ski practice. It's a big commitment, being on an NCAA athletic team, in any sport. It's a rare occasion when I can make it to practice twice per day, let alone once. After all, I do need to go to my office every once in a while and do some work. But on Friday, I felt like I could let things slide at the office for a bit, and I made it to a full day of Skiwolf training - all three sessions. Here's what happened:

Session 1:  Skiing at Kincaid. With new snow, spirits were high. 

Session 2: Afternoon session in the weight room.

Session three: Classroom session with the team's sport psychologist, Jon Osborn. He told us that, just like you have to do physical training every day to gain proficiency at your sport, you also need to do regular mental workouts to build the strong neural connections that allow focused, peak performance. In our classroom session, he taught us how to do these mental workouts.

So there you have it - a day in the life of a Skiwolf.

We're All Smiles Now

 It snowed in Anchorage last week. Looks to me like around six inches at Kincaid Park. (The Ski Club says eight inches.) The forecast for this coming week is stable weather with temperatures staying below 0 degrees C.  So I guess the ski season has begun here in Anchorage! We're pretty happy about it. Rollerskiing was getting kind of old, especially as the roads and paved trails were starting to get icy.

Meanwhile, the alpine team loaded up the trucks and rolled out of town yesterday morning, headed for their annual early-season training camp in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. They'll be there for the next three weeks, getting good quality slalom and giant slalom training every day at Mt Sima.