Welcome to the Olaf Skiing Hub. A place for Oles, alum, friends, family, and even strangers to come together to support St. Olaf Alpine Skiing. Stay tuned for updates throughout the season!
If you haven’t already heard, these past two weekends have been a huge success for the Oles! First, the St. Olaf Ski Team became Divisional Champions, taking home 11/12 possible medals, sweeping the podiums, and upsetting the other USCSA teams. Second, we just got back from Marquette, MI, braving the snow storm and the long hours in the van, but still coming home with the gold! Regional champions on both the men’s and women’s side, meaning we are headed to Nationals in two weeks!For more results, be sure and read the post below... and check-out live-timing.com!
As many of you may know, the USCSA National Championships are being held in Sun Valley, Idaho this year. To attend, our team has purchased 12 airline tickets (5 varsity skiers plus one alternate for both the men's and women's teams). However, our current annual budget simply cannot handle the magnitude of this expense. To help offset a portion of this cost, we have developed a sponsorship program to match your contributions with individual skiers and their trip to the national event. GOAL:We need your help in raising $100 per skier to go towards their airline tickets for Nationals.
To give you an inside look at the team and who you're helping through these sponsorships, we'll start by highlighting Junior Max Lund.
Max is an economics major at St. Olaf, and also plays outside midfield for the soccer team. Fresh off of victories in both the slalom and giant slalom at the Regionals championships at Marquette, MI over this past weekend, Max is an integral part of our team. We absolutely need his skills and experience if we are to live up to our potential in Sun Valley. Please help Max get to the national event! Any size donation can help offset our $100 goal for Max. 10 people giving $10, 5 giving $20, or 1 giving $100...you get the idea.
To help us pay for these plane tickets, go to www.stolafskiing.blogspot.com and click on the "GIVE NOW!" button in the upper right hand corner of the page. There you can add your sponsorship.
Thanks so much for your generous support, St. Olaf Ski Team
Hey everyone! This past weekend, after winning Divisionals at Afton Alps with nearly perfect 11 out of 12 medals, we competed in the 2011 USCSA Midwest Regional Championships in Marquette, MI. We had a long drive up (not nearly as long and scary through the snowstorm on the way home!)and arrived late Friday night for a bit of R&R before Saturday's slalom race. The next morning we left the hotel and arrived at the hill to see that the snow was exactly as we predicted it would be after a week of mid 40's and then cold again-glare ice.
Here are our results for the weekend!
Slalom
The first run was great for the majority of the team. On the men's side, Max Lund won the first run (36.78), followed by Paal Proitz (36.99)in second, and Nick Stang(37.13) in third. Nate Hansen pulled out a solid run placing him in 9th after the disapointing news of Jeff Stamp's fall and DNF.
Second run was a heart pumper for the ole men. Nate Hansen made it down with a great run moving him into fourth, however, with Nick Stang's second run DNF, Paal and Max were left in the start knowing they needed to finish inorder to place, and needed to finish well. Thankfully, both made it down without issues with Max wining the race, and Paal coming in second.
The womens side was slightly less exciting as the women skiied more consistantly than the men. Katie Ulvestad won both runs, with a combined time nearly two seconds ahead of the second place female. Maddey McLaughlin and Alex Anderson also put together two solid runs taking 3rd and 6th place both having better second runs moving them up into these respecive places.
First seed on B team Elke Wood also had a great day finishing 4th overall and 3rd for the Oles-- This just proves you never know what can happen when you have such a strong team!
Here are the results - http://live-timing.com/race2.php?r=24744&u=0 http://live-timing.com/race2.php?r=24743&u=0
Giant Slalom
Sunday was a great day for the Oles as well!First run was highlighted by Paal Proitz, Max Lund, and Nick Stang who came down in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd respectively. Between Paal in 1st and Nick in 3rd were only 14 hundreths of a second! Close behind were Jeff Stamp and Nate Hanson, less than a second out of first, and just one hundreth between them! For the first run on the B-team, Matt Hoffman edged out Joe Masciopinto by 3 tenths putting them in a similar nail biter as the rest of us with Anders Wennberg trailing by less than a second.
Second course for men was a bit turnier, but gave the guys a chance to show off their GS skills. With the oles in 5 of the top 6 spots, we knew it would be an exciting competition within the team.Nate Hansen came down first and had a little bit of trouble, but pulled off a decent run. Jeff Stamp followed next wining the second run! Nick came down next for the Ole's with a significant ammount of trouble in the flats, but kept his position in third. Then came Max Lund only 5 hundreths out of 1st. Skiing a conservative line but skiing agressivly, Max was able to tie Jeff's second run time. Last, Paal came down with a great run, however, was not quick enough to beat Max Lund-- putting him in second. The competition between the Ole men was intense, but all in good fun as it ended with a clean sweep of the podium and a trip to nationals! On the B-team, Joe Masciopinto overcame Matt Hoffman on the second run and finished third for the B-team race, directly followed by Hoffman with Anders Wennberg in the top ten.
For the women, the day was slightly disapointing with the girls skiing strong, but not as fast as they would have liked. Katie Ulvestad won the race (as we had hoped!) and Genette finishing 4th with two solid runs. Maddey McLaughlin was the third ole finisher taking 6th, followed shortly by Alex Anderson in 8th. It was a rough day for Elke Wood, and B-Teamers Laurie Taschler and Kathleen Stefely with DNF's from Elke and Kathleen, and skating and poling from Laurie.
Here is the results sheet for GS- http://live-timing.com/race2.php?r=24746&u=0 http://live-timing.com/race2.php?r=24745&u=0
Other highlights from the weekend include the Chinese Buffet in Marquette, team wrestling matches, enjoying a grilled hotdog at the regionals bonfire, skiier cross, and Genette winning the sportsmanship award for the year!
And to top off the review of our trip, we have a little video of the ride back in a Blizzard for you,
So, we got back on the St. Olaf campus Thursday early afternoon after our 15 hour van ride from CO (which seemed a bit longer for those who chose to wear their GS suits...) and had a quick turn around before leaving for the Indianhead FIS race at noon on Friday. In this time, some of us chose to catch up on sleep in a real bed, take a shower, or even do LAUNDRY-- ambitious, we know.
Indianhead, despite some soft snow conditions and lack of interesting terrain, proved to be yet another fun and successful venue for the Ole's.
Top finishers for the weekend included Max Lund placing 4th and 5th, Katie Ulvestad taking home a 6th and 7th place finish, Maddey McLachlan with an 8th, and Nate Hansen and Jeff Stamp each taking home a 9th place finish. And of course-- NICK STANG WITH TWO FIRST PLACE FINISHES!
CELEBRATE NICK STANG, COME ON!
(to the tune of Celebrate Good Times by Cool and The Gang)
An update from this weekends Afton Alps divisionals race will be coming your way soon-- and just to leave you with a cliffhanger, results were AMAZING!
Sorry for our absence for the past two weeks, but we have been incredibly busy training, racing, attending (some) class, and now-- SKIING IN COLORAD!
We left campus on Friday after Interim exams with Team Afton Coach Joe Paul and arrived right on time in Silverthorne at approximately 3am. The ride was rather uneventful including only the typical bickering between team members about who gets to drive, whether the heat should be on or off, or if Alex really can get Cooler Ranch Doritos even though they will stink up the ENTIRE van.
After a quick nights sleep, we were off to A-Basic for a day of free skiing on Saturday. The weather was absolutely beautiful with the temp reaching about 45 degrees. Ole's were seen ripping runs all over the hill, and some of us even got lost in the woods (ah hem. Joe Masciopinto).
Sunday we trained GS in the afternoon at Loveland with again, great weather and snow conditions. Paal Proitz and Kate Ulvestad had the male and female fast times of the day. Honorable mention to Joe Masciopinto for two epic falls (one while slipping), and Fedro DeTomassi for tightest line (which resulted in driving his face through a panel).
Monday morning, about 1am, captains Stamp and Stang called captains Taschler and Sekse with the question, "what are you doing," and statement, "we forgot to get food for breakfast and lunch tomorrow." Even with the slight issue, the team was able to get to the store, eat a hearty breakfast, pack lunch and leave Silverthorne early monday morning for a training time at Winter Park. Despite our dislike of the mild snowstorm, we got in a few good hours of GS training on Cheshire Cat. Thanks to Katrina's grandparents, JoAnne and Pem, we were also able to enjoy a delicious dinner of hamburgers, veggies, chips and cookies. Yum.
Today the temperature dropped, with a high of -5 but Olaf alpine headed off to Copper for our first, and only day of slalom training. Even though our skis stuck to teh snow from all the warm travel wax and the temp nipped at our toes (Maddey gets the award for worst frostbite of the year), we got in three hours of great training.
Throughout the trip we have enjoyed our time free skiing in the mountains, spending time at the Stamp cabin and Taschler condo (Thank you to both families!), watching video, training, eating our version of home cooking, and of course, spending too much time together!
We will be providing links to our youtube channel for some awesome video footage of the week, so stay tuned!
Were going to nationals???
Were going to nationals???
