The Season Begins

Apparently I forgot to post this last month...

So here it is, January 21 and it's looking like the snowboard season, at least on the East Coast is finally getting under way. At the moment our area is under a blizzard warning for tomorrow and Saturday so there's not going to be any snowboarding around here for a while since we won't be able to get out for several days. The good news is that Whitney is in Maine and they're not supposed to be getting any snow from this storm. She should be hitting the slopes this weekend for team practice and probably the local mountain as well. I'm not exactly sure what her practice schedule is, some days they'll be at Titcomb Mountain which is the local one and on the weekends they'll be at Sugarloaf. I think the coach has hooked her up with someone to work with at Sugarloaf, someone who knows boardercross so she can keep improving.

It's been a slow start to the winter and that has meant a slow start to the race season. The original plan was for her to go back to school early and race in a Maine Mountain Series race last weekend. Then she was going to come home for her first "spring" break next month and race at Massanutten. Unfortunately Maine Mountain had to do some schedule shuffling and the bx races were moved to the same weekend as the Massanutten races. They already had races 3 and 4 scheduled for then but now all four races are that weekend. Whitney debated switching back to the Appalachian Series and racing down here but we decided that was kind of risky based on how the winter has gone so far. Of course now we're supposed to be getting 18-24" of snow so I think it's safe to say the Massanutten race will be fine.

She also finally got some information on how the USCSA works. USCSA is the US Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association. Apparently, unlike for the alpine and Nordic skiers, there is no competition schedule for the snowboarders. I guess it's still too new or they don't have someone to coordinate, at least on the East Coast. So for the snowboarders it's up to the college to decide who to send to the USCSA National Championships. There are no USCSA races, no competitions except Nationals. Whitney is pretty confident that her coach will send her; she's been working out hard, knows what she's doing, and will be racing in USASA events. That will be pretty cool for her since the USCSA Nationals are at Whiteface, Lake Placid, NY.