From stuffing to snow

Another eventful and productive week is in the books for the Williams College Nordic Team. Starting off the week, most of us were able to get home for a few days to spend time with family around the dinner table, as we chowed down on some Thanksgiving classics and fueled up for the big weekend ahead in Craftsbury. Although the team arrived a couple days later than expected due to weather uncertainties, we made sure to stake claim to the rich Vermont soil.

Hundreds of laps of the .5 kilometer loop were broken up by good food, laughs, and some school work too.

It was great to see the coaches get involved in some shenanigans as well, as it was clear that we were the team having the most fun in the dining hall. 

The Craftsbury Outdoor Center did a great job of making the best of difficult circumstances to give us some solid conditions for both skate and classic training. 267 laps in, sticky klister on their hands and fresh, local Vermont produce in their stomachs had Eli and Jordan feeling a certain kind of way. 

It was exciting to get a taste of the racing season on our last morning with a little showdown against Harvard and UNH, in what can only be described as a one-of-a-kind racing format with an undisclosed number of laps and a nontraditional start. Great job to everyone, especially my fellow freshmen in the Class of 2019! Below: post-race with Luke, Nick, and Braden.

Thanks to the coaches for organizing another great week of training and to my teammates for some awesome memories.

-Evan Carr

c'bury camp

Hello EPH fans! RSmith here, I hope this post finds you well. We just had an awesome camp ON SNOW up in C'bury over thanksgiving break. And oh boy we have a lot to be thankful for. Four hours/day on a .5k loop could not have been more fun. We enjoyed the delicious c'bury food (as always), absorbed those beloved nordic ski community vibes, and got to spend quality time with each other and our awesome coaches Jay and Perry-Bear. I tried my hand at biathlon as well and discovered a sharp-shooter calling.  A perfect way to kick off a season on white-powder. I attached some photos  that really captured the essence of the excitement and documented some of the odds lost.

the week started with an awesome video made by our awesome coach Perry Thomas 

searching for snow: the purple cow spandex are out 

lots of excitement in the smith-mobile driving up to Craftsbury (Ft. Tom Smith)

teammates tea-bag for one another

Jordan

Elowyn sports an alternative team uniform

Sonya is too excited to nap

Tsaina AMPED about snow

Coach Jay and Pear-Bear

Perry lost an odds at dinner...

Coach Perry "I'm drooling" Thomas

Nick lost an odds before our team meeting to be Luke's footrest 

until next time,

Bex

What we love about the ski team

After a few months on the ski team I have found many many things that make me love the ski team. People work hard, are motivated, are supportive, are goofy and so many other great things. So I decided to ask some other people what they love about the team. Some responses were omitted due to insincerity and/or technical difficulties.

Another great week to be a Eph...

The team is getting excited for the season, and everybody is bringing that excitement to practice which has made for some sweet workouts and a lot fun being had.

It was a pretty tough week for me with three papers and a midterm so it was sweet to be able to count on a daily team dinner to laugh and have a good time. Here's Jack, Luke and Braden enjoying Driscoll's bountiful plenty.

Big intensity for the team this past week. On Tuesday the team did some L4 bounding intervals up Petersburg road. Then, this weekend we had race weekend simulation with a skate sprint Saturday morning and a classic 15k race for the men Sunday.

After a series of head to head competitions, prologue winner Jack found himself in the A Final against Eli, who was hungry for the win. At the end of the day, Eli's lightning fast tempo brought him across the finish line ahead of Jack, and I was on scene after the final to get the winner's thoughts. 

Also managed to catch a few words from second on the day, Jack.

Here's the team getting ready to cool down after the Sprints.

Jack helping Evan recover for the the 15k at lunch after the sprints

The 15k interval start provided its own drama as Jordan's powerful striding up the final climb gave him the win over Eli who finished 5 seconds back. Alas, no victory interview from Jordan as he and Perry were last seen Sunday doing resistance band drills and shotgunning pizza by the slice. 

But here are a couple shots Perry managed to get at the start line.

Me representing team camo-tights

Captain Josh with his game face on

Eli tossing the camera a wave before entering the zone

Overall, a solid weekend of time trials for all, and everyone is stoked to have five days off from school to celebrate thanksgiving and on Friday head to Craftsbury camp for the weekend. Craftsbury is bound to be a good time, and while there's no snow there now, we're all hopeful!

Junior Hannah Cole 4th at NCAA Championships

Congrats to Hannah Cole '17 on her 4th place finish today at the NCAA Championships! She led the Williams Women's Team to an NCAA Championship. Great job Hannah!

http://www.nescac.com/sports/xc/2015-16/NCAA/NCAA_112115

T-2 Days!

TEAM!

We're 30 minutes away from our departure for Winneconne, Wisconsin which means two things  (I'm now sitting in our Comfort Suites hotel in Wisconsin with access to WIFI!):
NATIONALS are this Saturday and SKIING (for me at least) starts Sunday. I've been incredibly impressed by the energy, enthusiasm, and hard work that I've seen and heard from you all this fall, so am really looking forward to joining you guys full time. That being said, with two days left of the cross country running season, I thought I'd give you a preview of the "big dance."

WHO:
Both men's and women's teams will be competing this weekend, after securing automatic bids with their first place finishes at the regional championships. For the women: Lacey Serletti ('16), Meg Richardson ('16, alternate), Michelle Buncke ('17), Hannah Cole ('17), Victoria Kingham ('18), Emily Sundquist ('18), Anna Harleen ('18) and Rebecca Delacruz-Gunderson ('18) will race.  For the men, we've got: Bijan Mazaheri ('16), Todd Ford ('16), Kyle Kistinger ('16), Noah Williams ('17), Peter Hale ('17), Ben Decker ('18), Griffin Colazzi ('18) and Liam Simpson ('18, alternate).

According to the USTFCCCA, both men's and women's teams are ranked second overall. The women will be hoping to challenge Johns Hopkins University who have taken first the past three years. UW Eau-Claire is the men's favorite.

WHERE:
Hosted by UW-Oshkosh, the 6km & 8km races will be run at Lake Breeze Golf Club, Winneconne, WI. The weather forecast predicts ~20mph winds and 2-4" of snow, so I'm not sure how much golf green we'll actually be seeing.

WHEN:
Women will race first, starting at 11:00 AM (central time, 12:00 pm EST) and then men will follow at 12:00 PM (1:00 pm EST).
Here's the link to live video of the meet: http://www.ncaa.com/liveschedule/2015/11/21

FUN FACT:
UW-Oshkosh also hosted the national meet in 2011. You can read the recaps of the men's and women's performances here and here.

Chiara Del Piccolo takes the individual win in 2011!

A picture is worth...

Not Yet

Hype is high here in Willytown—the women’s team has put some solid hours this fall and are looking FIT (thanks to our pullup challenge courtesy of new teamie Elowyn) and FLY (thanks to our embrace of the Carhartt vest life).

Elowyn modeling said vests

We just wrapped up a big week of training with three intensity sessions, including an awesome L4 bounding sesh at Jiminy.

Sweaty, post-bounding squad

And finished the week a la tradition with a HUGE workout homecoming morning splishin’ and splashin’ up Pine Cobble, joined by some alums.

Good to see some familiar faces!

Freshman Sonya Jampel looking ready for the Big Splash challenge,

while other team members rolled up not so prepared....

Senior homecoming feels

We made it! 

After a delicious brunch hosted by the Poker crew, it was time for some good, clean homecoming fun, namely dancing ourselves clean to fresh beats care of Jody (with a little help from JBeibs #SORRYnotsorry). 

Happy skiers are homecoming (note the vests)

Photo cred: RebReb

Another solid week in the books—keep your fingers crossed for snow in Craftsbury! 

**As always, many thanks to our supportive coaches and to the boiz aka the “best looking team on campus”.**

Squad up.

My time has come . . . coach has finally put me in!

While this is a skiing blog, I would like to take time to provide you with a brief overview of our extra curricular activities of late. 

So what have the boys been up to ?

Jason Lemieux was last seen showing his 1 year old son the Schnell shortcuts. 

Perry Thomas was last seen red-lining during a L3 workout. 

Luke Costley was last seen liking all of his Froshs' Facebook posts.
Josh Harrington was last seen being mistaken for the soft underbelly of Driscoll pierogi. 

Evan Carr was last seen ankle deep in Paresky French toast batter.  

Jordan Fields was last seen flipping patties faster than he navigated the Dallas airport in 2012. 

Nick Garder was last seen spitting unsolicited "fire" beats at random freshman girls. 

Braden Becker was last seen trying to dislodge his mountain bike from a tree. 

Hans Halvorsen was last seen "sharing" Braden's social relationships. 

Eli Hoenig was last seen vandalizing the Driscoll bathroom. 

Jack Schrupp was last seen transferring to St. Mikes. 

The women's team was last seen trying to disassociate themselves from the men's team. 

Uncle Mike was last seen ... 

Jokes aside, the men's squad is hungry. We are tuning up for a historic season. Beside good looks, we have depth, guts, and passion for what we do. This year's squad is truly something special. In closing, I would like to thanks the Coaches and the women for a productive fall, go EPHS! 

Now go away. 

We Are Hardy Ephs

Is it too soon to be excited about snow? Regardless, the team is beginning to anticipate real skiing as the air begins to cool, the mountains exchange their mid-fall, fiery colors for a uniform grey, and everyone signs up for their USSA licenses. 

This past week included mostly lighter training, but we still got outside and had some quality workouts, including a bounding session in the team’s favorite Vermont town, Woodford! The trails of Prospect Mountain were looking wide, steep and ready for a coating of snow.  After bounding up the centerpiece of the new course, Andy’s climb —> the Tunnel, we confirmed that our race trails really are the most difficult on the EISA circuit. But, to quote the haiku written by our dear president, Adam Falk, “we are hardy Ephs,” so we already love them.

We also had a productive goal-setting meeting, which took place in the slightly cramped and hot wrestling room.  In addition to establishing ambitious — but achievable —goals and expectations, the whole team decided to be nicer to Perry. Perry was very helpful during the meeting, writing out the notes on the whiteboard, but I was surprised and slightly disappointed that he never once in the entire meeting told us to “lock it up!” Has he moved on from this mysterious directive of last year? Will he find a new one to take its place?

In the spirit of being nicer to Perry, we found a snake on the side of the road (we at first thought it was a Rattler, but it was later identified as a juvenile, non-venomous Milk snake) and decided it would look good as an ornament on Perry’s van. See documentary pictures:

 

 Jordan and Luke are very ferocious. They're not quite ferocious enough, however, to touch the snake with their bare hands. Jordan Fields: "Dude, I've never seen a Rattle snake in Vermont before, but they totally have them here!"

 

Luke gives Perry a present. I don't think the snake lasted very long up there.

First year Braden Becker learns his lesson: lock your bike, or it'll end up stolen ... or lodged in a tree.

Wassssuuuppppp

The team just finished a big three week block last week and is enjoying an easier more ski specific week this week before our next big block leading into Thanksgiving camp. The focus of last week was definitely getting up on Mt. Greylock as much as possible before the road closed on Sunday afternoon. Wednesday we had some gnarly classic intervals into a monsoon on the top of Greylock. When we got back to school the football team wasn't practicing because of the weather, so its safe to say we are the toughest team on campus. As Perry and Jason say, "You gotta get tough some how." Thursday we got back out on the classic roller skis for a focused speed session. Perry put together a nice picture of all of our poling positions.

Everyone is looking strong, and as Tsaina mentioned, we had almost everyone on the team PR in the Pine Cobble running test and Tsaina is the new women's record holder! Finally, we finished our week long assault of Mt. Greylock on Sunday with a long skate up the back side. Everyone is pretty stoked for a rest week and for some Perry led team yoga in the next couple of days to gear back up for a big upcoming week. 

The team is looking stronger than ever this year. The freshmen are a force and a bunch of characters. Nick Gardner has been trying to give Luke, our one ski team JA, some parenting advice on how to raise his freshmen, which has made for some great dinner time conversation. Great teams and fast skiers is a lethal combo. Watch out EISA!

The team is excited to see a lot of alums come back in the next couple of weeks for homecoming and other all school/team events. WASSSSUPPP is a term used heavily by one of the alums and it has been heard more frequently as the the alum's visit draws near.

Cheers 

Halloweekend!

Hi friends, this is Tsaina, writing my very first blog post!! Super exciting stuff, for sure. Almost as exciting as the fantastic week of training we just wrapped up. Halloweekend, especially, was a fantastic last couple of days that showcased everyone's various talents and skills.

Friday evening, the team took advantage of a recovery day from training to celebrate the season and enjoy some good-natured competition with the annual pumpkin-carving contest, which was, of course, a huge success.

Here we have Eliza and I working on our entry. We took some creative liberties, but I think they paid off in the end. (photo cred: Rebecca Smith!)

Another candid shot: Elowyn and Braden  putting some finishing touches on their classic Jack-O-Lantern design.

While there was no distinct forerunner in the pumpkin department, Elowyn clearly won the costume contest, by a huge margin.

If you look carefully, you'll notice that Elowyn actually appears to be headless! (photo cred: Rebecca again)

The next day, a dark and stormy Saturday morning, with everyone all warmed up from pumpkin carving, All Hallows' Eve began with the traditional spooky Canadian Strength test and the eery Pine Cobble hill climb. We'll probably never know for sure what happened in the weight room or on that hill that day, except that none of us will ever be quite the same...

But in all seriousness, it was super awesome to see how fit/strong everyone is looking. There were quite a few personal records set and a lot of sweaty, happy skiers. 

Well, that's all for now, thanks for reading!

Update from France...

Bonjour Ephs and Eph fans!

Based on blog updates/Facebook posts, it looks there has been some serious cow rocking going on in Billsville this fall. While I've been pretty jealous seeing photos of Mountain Day and some incredible foliage on Greylock, France has been really amazing and it is sad and strange to think that I will be leaving in less than two months.

For those of you that don't know, I am studying French in Grenoble, France this fall. Grenoble is a city in the southwest of France that is considered the "Capital of the Alps" but that is also the flattest city in the country. There are three universities here so it is an amazing place for students, but more importantly, it is also great for skiing! I have been really lucky to be able to find a team that I train with occasionally, as well as a ton of incredible run/hikes around the city and in other parts of the Alps. I have taken a lot of pictures over the past two months or so, so I am going to let them do the talking to give you all an idea of what I've been up to here on the other side of the pond. They are not at all in order because I am neither that organized nor that technologically savvy.

This is the view from an awesome hike I did from Grenoble. The big mountain in the distance is Mont Blanc. This hike ended with me sitting in a small town for 3.5 hours waiting for a bus that I was not sure whether or not would come to take me back to Grenoble. Luckily it came. 

The view of Grenoble from one of the mountains surrounding it.

The World Championships of hangliding and paragliding! There were hundreds of various flying things in the air and everyone was dressed up in bizarre costumes. 

Mont Blanc up close, from a hike I did with my host family. 

I went hiking for a weekend in Zermatt and saw the Matterhorn just one afternoon because the weather was not too wonderful... but it was so fun to see the homeland of Elena and eat lots of chocolate. 

I felt obligated to post this picture of cow shaped bread. There is a festival in Grenoble (and other towns throughout the Alps) when farmers bring their cows down from the mountains and parade them through the streets, so everything is cow themed. 

I just got back from fall break, during which I went and visited a friend in Italy and saw cool stuff like the Vatican and the Colosseum.

Then I went to Barcelona and spent some time on the beach, which was lovely and relaxing.

The first hike I did in Grenoble, exploring some caves in the side of a cliff overlooking the city.

Hiking in Zermatt! Zermatt is really amazing and there are so many incredible trails... I would love to go back there for longer than a weekend!

I now realize that the majority of this post is mostly views of mountains, but I really can't get enough of them. The snow is starting to fall up high, and next weekend I think I am going to go on a snow hunt up in the higher peaks that are not far from where I live. I hope everything is going well back in the Purple Valley, and I will be thinking about you all during Thanksgiving Camp, ripping it up Craftsbury and eating delicious food. Less than two months till Quebec when I will see you all again!

HB