Paul Smiths Nordic Team Split Competition Weekend
Craftsbury , VT/ Lake Placid, NY ~ The Paul Smith?s college nordic team split weekend competitions with the nordic skiers competing in the NENSA Eastern Cup at Mt. Vanhovenberg in Lake Placid, NY. The Bobcat Biathlon team traveled to Craftsbury outdoor center to compete in the US Biathlon IBU trials a competition used to choose athletes for international competitions including IBU Cups and open European championships among other events. Paul Smith?s had five athletes compete all looking to qualify for both a World University Games spot or a world junior qualification spot as well.
The biathletes competed in three races over four days in the IBU Cup trials with two individual sprint competitions and a short individual race. Dolcie Tanguay had a strong weekend with an overall ranking in the top 8 and a 7th place finish in the sprint race and an 8th in the short individual. Kaisa Bosek had a strong end of the competition shooting clean in the final sprint race and finishing in 11th place. Diego Schillaci and Logan Jensen had strong weekends for the first competition in the senior category. While incoming first-year athlete Nate Livingood had a solid weekend in the youth category finishing the weekend with a win in the sprint competition.
Back in Lake Placid, the Nordic skiers were led by Aidan Ripp who garnered a top 20 finish in the classic race despite challenging waxing conditions, with a performance that saw him move up to 10th overall in the 5k skate pursuit. Timothy Ziegler and first-year athlete Phil Matthews both tallied top 50 finishes in the competition. While Jessie Church had two great races finishing in the top 75 on both days.
Coach Matt Dougherty had this to say "Overall we had a good three days of racing, we just finished finals and are putting in a solid training block so we were not super primed and rested for this competition. However, we had some great performances and I feel really confident in this preparing us for our bigger trials coming in about 10 days in Alaska. While the rest of the team competing in the Eastern cup had a great start to the season competing against the best skiers from the East from NCAA D1 schools and more we had several top 50 performances a great start to what should be another great year for the team?
The biathletes will return to action December 28-31 at the US Biathlon Jr trails in Anchorage Alaska for a chance to make the World University Games team as well as qualify for a world junior championship slot as well.