Kim Fitzgerald received the Female Athlete of the Year.  They announced all of her accomplishments including the school record/ state championship relay 4×800 team of two years ago but the one that I thought was most impressive was that she has 16 varsity letters from Lathrop!

Logan Hanneman did not receive the Male Athlete of the Year which I was initially disappointed to hear but was relieved when he received the equally or more prestigious James Gowden Memorial Award for outstanding athletic and academic achievement.   When announcing Logan they of course mentioned his achievements swimming and as the state skimeister.  The thing I was most impressed with in the announcement was that Logan was the first athlete to be ranked number 1 for there age in the country upon graduating Lathrop!

Also receiving awards were Stefan Hajdukovich, Sarah King (she got like 8), Robert Hovda and Hannah Ekblad.  I was very honored to receive an award as well this spring as Coach of the Year for Lathrop.

Congratulations Logan!

Photo Karl Kowalski

Thusday’s Classic Race- The boys had tough waxing conditions as the snow warmed up right before race time so the green kick waxes that were working earlier in the morning changed to blues.  We were able to get 5 of our 6 guys out on decent wax but Stefan unfortunately still had the green on.  Logan was focusing on getting a good head start in the Skimeister and he really killed it to get a 30 second lead.  We hit the wax much better for the girls who I think all had great races.  Mikayla, Jade and Claire seamed to have their best races of the season.  Megan however may have had the best race of her career thus far ending up in third where a top 10  seamed like a good goal going into the race.

Friday’s Skate Race- The soft, slow conditions made for a challenging day but our athletes handled it very well.  Megan hung in for a 9th place finish and Mikayla had another good race as well.  On the boys side the pace at the front seamed reasonable for the first 7k and I was pleased to see Logan, Kyle and Stefan all at or near the front pack.  Logan went for a “sit and kick” strategy that paid off by not leading the race until the last kilometer but winning the skimeister and both individual races.  Kyle had an outstanding race finishing 8th, just behind the leaders.  Sean also had a great race and passed a lot of people that started ahead of him and ended up as the 4th Lathrop skier right behind Robert.

Saturday’s Relay- Mikayla kicked off the day to an excellent start tagging off our women in fourth, within sight of third.  Jade and Kim skied well in the middle legs tagging off to Megan in a pack for 5th-7th place.  Megan stayed in that pack as the anchor leg but we ended up in 7th just out of fith place though.  The men’s race started off pretty good but really picked up steam through our 2nd 3rd and 4th leg skiers.  Stefan in the second leg looked really smooth on the classic skiing and moved our team up to 4th place.  Kyle skied the third leg and while he didn’t get much time back from third placed South he did gain a bunch of time on second placed Chugiach.  Logan as the anchor leg was tagged with around a 45 second deficit to both second and third.  He closed most of that time time down in the first  3k of the race and when he got to the warm up loop it looked like a podium relay finish might be in the cards.  The extra energy expendable in the beginning of the 5k leg though proved to be too much for the warm up loop and we finished just seconds out of third.

Pictures courtesy of Nick Ferree

Megan takes the early and commanding lead

Jade and Mikayla working together

Apparently this picture was in the first 9k before the Lathrop Train left the station

Kyle finishing off in second

We just got back from another great trip to Valdez. Snow conditions were pretty icy but the sun was shining and we enjoyed awesome views of the mountains and Prince Williams Sound. I thought we skied really well and coped with the potentially challenging Klister conditions quite well. Big thanks to Kelsey, Kate and Tyler for getting covered in Klister and getting everyone their skis on time and about as good as they could be for the conditions.

Taking a look at the results we did really well, better than last year I think. In the relay we had 3 teams in the top 10. Our first team (Kipp, Megan, Kyle, Mikayla) just nudged out West Valley’s top team for the win by 1 second.

Storm tagging off to Kim

In the individual races we had an amazing number of people in the top 10 given that there were 8 teams competing at the event. In each race (Varsity and JV, Men and Women) we had between 2 and 4 skiers in the top 10.

Maddie after a very tight corner

In the open race Coach Kate and Coach Nick got second in their races which is very respectable but unfortunately a little worse than last year.

Finally we came home with a couple of trophies! The Girls Varsity got second overall and the boys Boys Varsity won.

Here are a few pictures from Thompson’s Pass and the drive home:

Windy

Going up for a second run of the one stretch with good snow

The view on the drive home (Summit Lake area)

Check out the results page on the right for full results but here are a few quick shout outs.  The varsity girls squad looked great and all ended up reasonably close to one another on the results page.  They ended up the weekend as the 5th highest placed team and while that might change around a little for state, it certainly puts us in a good place.  Kyle skied his way into an excellent top 10 in the varsity boys race despite slow skis on the first day while Dan improved ~60 places over last years Lynx Loppet classic race.  All of our JV boys qualified for the pursuit race (which means that they were all in the top 100 out of ~200-250 racers) and most moved up on the second day.  Sean lead this crew with a 4th place finish for the Lathrop team which is really impressive.  Leah lead the JV girls to a top 20 finish but Autumn and Sara looked really good as well both looking like they had been skiing for multiple years, not multiple weeks

Here are some pictures of the skate race:

The first two races of the Tour de Ski were a great way to kick start the official race season.  We started off with a ~3k “prologue” skate race on Friday night followed by a 6k women’s/8k men’s skate race on Saturday.  The team skied really well as a whole and it sounds like most people were happy with their races.  The prologue format on Friday seamed to be popular with people and I really liked the “Night Race” feel to it.  Racing under the lights always seams faster to me for some reason.  Saturday had tough conditions with a couple inches of snow falling between grooming and the end of the races.  We also had some bib issues for some of our girls which made for a bit of a last minute scramble.  Our team managed the tough conditions very well though and had a good attitude throughout the day.

Congratulations to everyone who competed but I’m especially proud of the skiers where this was their first ski race ever or their longest ski race ever!

Here’s a sweet picture of Kyle racing on Saturday courtesy of Bert Boyer

Kyle Hanson