The men's and women's Nordic ski teams will travel to Colby this weekend to compete for the second time this year. The Colby Carnival follows a somewhat lackluster debut performance at the St. Lawrence Carnival in Lake Placid, New York this past Saturday.
"As a team, we weren't at our best this weekend," said coach Nathan Alsobrook. "A lot of people were really tired this weekend; it's going to take a couple weeks to get themselves really ready for racing."
Alsobrook was, however, pleased by a number of "individual bright spots."
"Wilson Dippo ['12], the men's captain, had two of his best college races ever," Alsobrook said, referring to Dippo's 29th place finish in the 15K free and 39th place finish in the 10K classic. Sophomore James Crisp turned in strong performances as well, placing 39th and 40th in the same two races.
Alsobrook also mentioned first year Riley Eusden, who placed 46th in the 10K, as a standout.
"I really want to give props to Riley—he just did such a fantastic job, really surprised me," he said. "I was just really struck by how well he did."
Individual highlights on the women's team were first year Kaitlynn Miller, who came in 40th in the 6K classic and sophomore Hannah Wright who took 48th place in the 10K Free.
Although the team came in 11th of 14 teams, women's captain Grace Hyndman '11 says that the overall team standings are not always a fair measure of the Polar Bears' talent because half of a team's point total is derived from alpine (downhill) races.
"You can't even compare because we don't have an alpine team. Most of the schools we compete against have alpine teams—that's why we don't have a home carnival either," Hyndman said.
Hyndman also praised the work ethic of her teammates.
"We had a really, really good fall," she said. "Very good, solid training. I'd say that was a total success, and now that's just a matter of translating that into races."
Alsobrook, however, noted that the rigorous training schedule—six days a week since early October—might be taking its toll. When asked about what he wanted the teams to work on in preparation for the next carnival, Alsobrook cited rest as a top priority.
"I think that we hit the training pretty hard over Winter Break and a lot of them just clearly aren't coming back as rested as they should be. [We should be] cutting back our training a little bit," he said.
Ultimately though, Alsobrook has high hopes for this year's team.
"It's a young team, it's a developing team," he said. "I think that there's enough talent and that we can certainly improve...this could be [the] best Bowdoin ski team in a long while."