Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Spring Series

After dashing across country from Colorado in two days we signed into the Western Region Spring Series at Mission Ridge, WA. We always enjoy Mission Ridge, both because of the great races they host and the fact that our good friends the Dolans live there. They hosted us in their new home (which he built) and we got to meet their new baby boy. The regional Spring Series is also fun because all of our friends (coaches and athletes) whom Scott "came up" with are present.

The points were good at the races, with about ten USST athletes plus top NCAA and FIS racers from across the country in the field. Scott came hoping to lower his tech points and did get a few minor scores. Although things didn't work out exactly how he wished, the series was none the less a success. Scott has been under significant stress recently and had lots of things to sort out, including a decision about what to do next year. He also wanted to improve his finish ratio, while working on his line and technique. The combination of all these things stood in the way of resounding scores.

Scott struggled with his line for the first half of this season. A variety of factors, including his focus on strengthening the top of the turn, messed up his timing. In a sort of Catch 22, the wrong line takes away the opportunity to properly develop a turn, and working on properly developing the turn messed up his line. Anyway, last week he showed some real consistency in both regards. He skied great most of the time, but seemed to have a bauble in each run... just enough to preclude a score. He left Mission Ridge feeling good about his skiing and looking forward to summer training.

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