At the end of every day they give out the awards for the day's events. The mc of the show is great, loves skiing, loves the kids, and really makes it a fun time. They usually start off with sponsor giveaways; this year they had lots of Love Your Melon beanies, Monster, and at least one set of skis and a snowboard. Boss Hogg, the mc, makes the giveaways fun. Generally he wouldn't give them out to the last few rows, just on principle. Sometimes he'd toss them into the crowd. A couple of the days he was trading food for a hat; one time it was a half eaten banana, another a can of Pringles, and the best was McDonald's French fries. He also was looking for specific things, like a $5 bill with four 8's on it, or a coin from a year sometime before he was born, a vertical driver's license, a day lift ticket from 2017; anything his crazy mind could come up with. Whitney got one of the beanies on Friday. We got there a bit early and Boss Hogg came over to talk to us. Whitney told him that her team abandoned her and was already on the way back to Maine and we got talking about Maine since he lived there for a long time. We figure she got it because of the Maine connection and being abandoned. No matter how she got it she got the one she really wanted and she's been wanting one for a while. She really likes their beanies, likes that they're a "give back" company (they donate 50% of their profits to pediatric cancer research), and has wanted to get one for a while. She's super happy to have one now.
On Saturday night they had the final awards and banquet. By this point all the rest of the UMF athletes were well on their way back to Maine so I went with Whitney. We got there early and sat at a table, hoping others would join us. Eventually some others sat down, turns out they were the Nordic coaches from the University of Wyoming. Whitney got chatting with one of the coaches and he invited her to their after party. She didn't go, not knowing anyone but the coaches, but should have; the Nordic guys from her team said they were a good group. We ended up moving to a table with a friend of Whitney's, a snowboarder from Villanova, the only one from her college. We had a nice time with her and her parents.
At the Saturday banquet they give out the big awards, individual all around and team awards, and it takes a while. Whitney got 7th place for women's alpine snowboard which combined the scores from boardercross, slalom, and giant slalom. Since she was the only UMF female snowboarder it would have been really hard for her to finish high in the team award besides she thinks you have to have at least two, maybe three athletes for the team award. All in all it was a good evening.
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