The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“All three boys finished the week super-motivated”
Junior Nationals can be an eye-opening experience for any Nordic racer, especially when jumping into a new age class or making the trip for the first time.
And that’s what the Crested Butte Nordic Team (CBNT) experienced when they headed to Fairbanks, Alaska for Junior Nationals last week.
Three athletes from the team qualified: first year J1 age class skiers Prawit Durgan and Forrest Smith and first year J2 age class skier Kai Sherman.
Both Durgan and Smith have been to Junior Nationals before, but that was last year in their second year of racing in the J2 class. For Sherman, not only was it his first year racing in the J2 class, it was his first trip to the big show. As a result, expectations were high but somewhat limited.
“Heading in, I think there was a lot of excitement but also realism,” says CBNT head coach Austin Ross. “They are all on the younger side of things.”
Fortunately for the three local skiers, they were coming out of the Rocky Mountain Nordic division, which is one of the strongest divisions in the nation at the J1 level, and extremely competitive at the J2 level.
Nevertheless, there wasn’t anything that could have prepared them, or the entire Rocky Mountain Nordic (RMN) division team athletes for that matter, for the Junior National race schedule.
The week opened with the distance skate races as J1 athletes lined up for a 10-kilometer race and J2 a five-kilometer event.
Being from altitude, one would think that is where Nordic skiers will excel, but the truth is, it’s just as hard to go down in elevation as it is to go up. The physiology of lung capacity versus muscle strain varies at altitude whether you’re low or high.
“Ultimately, you want to live at a high elevation and train at a low elevation,” explains Ross. “Adjusting to low altitude can be a really big adjustment.”
And that’s what Smith, Durgan, Sherman and the rest of the RMN division skiers found as they all struggled in the opening skate races.
“As a region, Rocky Mountain skiers didn’t do very well,” says Ross. “They just did not perform up to their potential.”
While morale was low following the first day, Ross reminded his skiers that there was plenty of racing to go and they continued to gain ground as the week progressed.
“I told them they had to keep their chins up and get ready for the next race,” says Ross.
The CBNT skiers joined forces with other RMN athletes for the next event, the 3x3k classic relay. Smith teamed up with a skier out of Summit County and Vail to finish in 11th place as Durgan raced with Steamboat and Summit County skiers to place 18th. Sherman’s team had a rough go of it in the J2 class but Ross saw his athletes start to turn a corner.
“They skied well, given the situation,” says Ross. “They were all starting to feel better and were skiing better than the first race.”
The CBNT skiers had another tough run in the following event, the freestyle sprint race. Sprint race events open with an individual time trial qualifier race. From there you either make the cut and continue to race as much as four more times, or it’s one and done.
Such was the case for the three CBNT skiers as they all missed the first cut but also saved their energy for the final, classic race.
“It was a bummer that none of them made it through but it paid off in the long run,” says Ross.
While final results in the final classic race may not indicate stellar showings, all three CBNT skiers finished the week on a high note. Durgan posted a 37th-place finish out of 74 racers, while Smith got tangled up in the mess of the mass start and suffered through to a 62nd-place finish. Sherman had his best race of the week, coming in 26th out of 55 J2 skiers.
“All three boys finished the week super-motivated,” says Ross. “They realized their goals are within reach and they’re ready to work hard this summer.”
