Glennallen Nordic Ski Team Competes at First Meet of the Season
By Kari Rogers
The first day of the 2022 Colony Chaos Ski Meet featured a 5-kilometer classic-style race for boys and girls. Classic style is the “traditional” kick and glide ski style. Friday, December 9th was a beautiful sunny day with a perfect temperature of 10 degrees above. Coach Rogers corked in a green wax on the kick zone of each racer’s skis and hoped it would provide maximum glide with some kick on the hills.
The Government Peak Recreation Area race course is hilly, with an intimidating hill right out of the starting line and a long, steep pitch just before the finish. As the Glennallen High School racers checked out the starting line area, Latino music boomed over the speakers and an engaging announcer with microphone in hand yelled out “Glennallen is in the house! Give it up for Glennallen!”
Other teams milled about, practicing their technique on the warm-up loop and showing off their face paints and matching lycra uniforms. Welcome to the world of competitive high school Nordic skiing. Nerves were taut. With ski race starts staggered, a skier left the starting line every fifteen seconds.
Sophomore Grace Rogers started fourth in a line-up of 37 girls and crossed the finish line first with a time of 28:16 that placed her 23rd out of 38 skiers. Sophomore Andrew Severs started fifth in the boys line-up and held his own with a time of 24:13 seconds, which earned him 41st out of a field of 54 skiers.
Not a bad start for the new Glennallen Panthers Nordic ski team! It should be noted that in high school competitive Nordic skiing, the school class division system is not used. Therefore, small programs like Glennallen ski competitively with much larger schools from the Mat-Su Valley, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. For example, Colony High School’s team has at least 50 high school skiers.
The second day of skiing on Saturday brought the 5-kilometer freestyle race. Freestyle skiing means that either classic style or skate skiing is allowed, but in reality, all the skiers use skate skiing which allows an athlete to fairly fly down the trail. This style of skiing requires tremendous physical conditioning and command of the more difficult technique in order to maintain a skate ski over a long distance.
Glennallen skiers fared well for their first meet, with Andrew placing 35th out of 54 skiers and Grace placing 29th out of 39 skiers. Both Glennallen High School athletes have personal goals of improving their time over the course of this season. Overall, Colony and West Valley High Schools dominated this meet.
Meanwhile, when Glennallen Junior High skiers (Timothy Severs, Simon McMahan, Will McMahan, and Hunter Carlton) weren’t cheering on their teammates, they were out on the groomed trails, working to perfect their own skate ski and classic style techniques.
The next scheduled ski meet will be at the Valdez Invite on January 6th and 7th with good viewing of the competitive event at several easy access points from within the community. We hope you will attend to cheer on your Glennallen Nordic Ski Team. Team info is also readily available online for you on our new Facebook group page: Glennallen Nordic Ski Team!
