OCR Text |
Show Park City Junior Nordic Team gathers steam in Pocatello by Nan Chalat The Park City Junior Nordic Nor-dic team is improving by leaps and glides. "The team really came through last weekend," said coach Al Bronston after bringing the team home from three days of Junior Olympic qualifying races in Pocatello. The young Parkites spent most of Friday warming up and evaluating the competition. com-petition. There were about 60 junior nordic racers from Sun Valley, Jackson, Pinedale and Park City, said Bronston. Park City's performance in the two-kilometer sprints on Friday was not outstanding outstan-ding except for Tony Chambers' Cham-bers' third place finish in the JI (16-18-year-old) division. But by Saturday the team had learned its way around the Pocatello track and began picking up momentum. momen-tum. Dave VanLuven posted a third place on the hilly track in the JI division. Teammate Tony Chambers picked up a fifth place and Hans Despain finished eighth. In the girl's JI division Heidi Hunter earned two third place wins and 11-year-old Megan Holcomb won first place in the JIV (10-11-year-old) division, beating her toughest rival, Ntala Sdnner of Pinedale. "Sunday, Tony Chambers had his best race ever," Bronston said. "He was just xk minute out of first place which was taken by a member mem-ber of the U.S. Biathlon development team. The second place went to last year's Junior Olympic gold medal winner. It was an exceptional ex-ceptional race for Tony." Chambers finished third. Dave VanLuven finished fifth in the JI division and Mike Richards moved up into in-to second place in the JIIs. Last weekends races also saw Abbey Peterson move up from the Jills to the girls' JII division. The team leaves again for Sun Valley this Thursday, said Bronston. |