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Show Wed/Thurs/Fri, March 14-16, 2018 The Park Record B-3 TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Ava Surridge competes in the finals round of the Freestyle and Freeskiing Junior National Big Air competition at the Utah Olympic Park on Saturday. Surridge took first in the girls competition with a 78.6. Continued from B-1 The best upcoming in big air “Thirty coaches worked night and day to produce it,” Evans said. “Supported then by 550 volunteer sessions — something like that. But next year, as we go into world championships, they are forecasting about 2,500 volunteer sessions to produce that. So this volunteer effort, we’re anxious to help with that, but we cant do it all, we need to collaborate.” Big air As for the competitions, athletes from Park City represented their home turf well, taking four of the top six podium spots. On the boys’ side, Mac Forehand, a Park City native, took first with a switch double cork 1440, earning a solid 97.4 on the final run of the day. “I call it turtle grab, but it’s a double grab with two hands,” he said. He was pushed into making the bold move by Parkite Troy Podmilsak, who was tied with Forehand going into the final jump after landing a regular double cork 1440. Forehand said the nearly 50-degree weather did make the competition more difficult, but he said overall it turned out to be a great day. “It feels great,” he said. “I got first last year, so it feels good to get it back to back.” Ava Surridge took first on the girls’ side with a 78.6, followed by local athletes Alli Macuga and Tasia Tanner. After the event, families and athletes gathered around the cement podiums outside the Alf Engen Ski Museum, throwing snowballs as they waited for the official results. Tanner said the junior nationals were a good event for her, but there were some glar- TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Rayan Hmidi competes in the finals round of the Freestyle and Freeskiing Junior National Big Air competition at the Utah Olympic Park on Saturday. TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Axl Bonenberger loses hold of his landing during his last of three runs in the finals round of the Freestyle and Freeskiing Junior National Big Air competition on Saturday afternoon. He finished the day with a high score of 81.2, garnered in his first run. ing gaps between the genders in how many athletes showed, and in level of competition. “It’s always interesting to come into a big air competition where there’s six girls and 65 guys,” she said. “And it’s always interesting to have to watch them beforehand throw big, nice tricks and land them then get 93s and stuff. Then to watch the girls come down and some of them throw flips, maybe throw a rodeo 5, maybe have a couple girls throw a (700), but overall we just don’t throw as hard of a trick and it’s just really interesting to watch and it’s kind of weird I guess.” She wondered aloud why more girls weren’t competing, and contrasted big air with alpine racing, where there could be more than 100 female competitors. “We have six in a junior national best-of-the-best competition,” she said. “It’s just kind of crazy.” Park City Ski and Snowboard big air coach Chris “Hatch” Haslock said one reason for the low turnout was a booking overlap with the Revolution Tour, which was hosting its final event in Mammoth Mountain, California, at the time. Tanner, who is primarily an aerialist, said she was drawn to big air because it allows another level of freedom. Instead of having to call all her tricks beforehand and abide by rules regarding tucking and form, Tanner can roll up to a big air ramp and change what she’s doing mid-air. She suspects that the sport is intimidating for many girls, and said while events like moguls have jumps, they aren’t on the same order of magnitude as big air. “But big air, it’s part of the name,” she said. “You have to get big air and you have to throw a decently big trick and the landing can hurt sometimes.” In a later interview, Macuga, who took second for her front flip, also said she wished more girls were competing. When asked what she thought would bring more girls into the sport, she said the best thing she could think of was to try and motivate them. “Maybe just try our hardest and inspire others and hopefully they’ll come and try the event out,” she said. For now, with the season over, Macuga said she is going to go train at a few summer camps, and wait for the snow to start falling again. Continued from B-1 Skiers push their limits There was also mud, and there were signs for that, too, but it was gold that had brought athletes and coaches from across the U.S., and Saturday was the last to earn any of that. The week-long race series was culminating with the threeby-three relay races, in which racers would represent their divisions. The track was groomed for a 3 kilometer loop, giving each relay leg one lap — three laps per team. The U-20 men kicked off the race at 9 a.m. with Alaska earning the first gold medal of the day. Alaska’s second leg racer, Canyon Tobin, closed the gap on Rocky Mountain, allowing Hunter Wonders to finish in first on the anchor leg. New England finished second, followed by Rocky Mountain in third. The U-20 women’s relay went next, with New England taking first, followed by Rocky Mountain and the Intermountain Division — which Utah is a part of. Sofia Shomento, who now attends Dartmouth College, took to the course with purple/pink hair for the Intermountain Division’s BEN RAMSEY/PARK RECORD Sofia Shomento, left, congratulates her teammate, Annika Landis, after Landis finished Saturday’s threeby-three relay. The team, also comprising Arianna Woods, finished third in the womens U-20 race. first leg, called a scramble leg. “It’s a Dartmouth tradition,” she said. “Pink hair makes you fast.” She said taking the scramble leg equates to hanging on with the frontrunners and tagging over to the middle leg in a good position. When the time came, Shomento tagged Arriana Woods for the second leg of the race. Woods said the week had taken a toll on her power, but she knew if she could leave the team’s anchor in a good position, the team BEN RAMSEY/PARK RECORD Rena Schwartz, part of New England’s winning women’s U-20 threeby-three relay team after stepping off the podium. would finish well. “It was almost harder than yesterday even though it was shorter,” said Woods, who hails from Montana. “It was like the cherry on top for pain. It was pretty fun.” Annika Landis of Middleberry College, skiing for a Sun Valley team, finished the race for the Intermountain Division. Following the race, she was congratulated by coaches and passersby for her strong performance. “When I got tagged we were in a good spot, and I was hungry for a podium, so I just rolled my eyes back and went for it,” she said. She had the fastest third lap of the race, finishing in 12 minutes, 3 seconds. New England took first in the boys U-18 division, followed by Rocky Mountain, then Alaska. In the U-18 girls division, Pacific Northwest took first, followed by New England, then Alaska. The Intermountain Division teams finished seventh (comprising Sarah Morgan, Sophia Mazzoni and Annabel Hagen) and ninth (comprising Lilly Brunelle, Savanna Fassio and Geneva Humbert). Humbert, a Park City Ski and Snowboard athlete, anchored the second team and collapsed after crossing the line with the eighth-fastest leg of her lap. “It was the hardest thing I’ve probably ever done,” Humbert said after regaining her breath. “I felt like I was working so hard and I was not going very fast at all.” She and others said the soft snow absorbed their efforts, giving them little in return, and the heat took its toll on the racers. “I just thought that my team worked so hard for us to get where we were, I couldn’t let them down,” Humbert said. “And I just thought that I just have to give this my all. This is the last race, I have nothing I have to recover for, so I just need to go for it.” Before the U-16 races, the last of the day, teams began congregating along the race course to cheer their teammates on. The Intermountain Division teams had plodded up the last, long climb and had grouped in a kind of après party, compete with a little speaker pumping out music to set the tone. The older racers, their jobs done, were mostly shirtless, and chased the U-16 competitors as they went past, shouting encouragement. “We’re racing on snow, but it definitely feels like midsummer,” said Drew Palmer-Leger, BEN RAMSEY/PARK RECORD A troup of Intermountain Division racers and fans makes its way to a vantage point to cheer on their teammates. who hails from Park City but competes for a club in Sun Valley, Idaho. “At the beginning of the week, there was a little bit of natural snow, so it looked like winter. But now it just looks like some ribbons of snow out in the middle of the grass fields.” After the U-16 boys finished, with New England taking gold, followed by Intermountain’s team (comprising Parkite Aidan Rasmussen, Elijah Weening of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Kai Mittelsteadt of Montana) and Pacific Northwest, the end of the event was in sight. “It’s always been fun on the home course, because you know all the technique zones really well,” said Sarah Morgan of Wasatch Nordic Ski Academy. “It’s also sad to say bye to everyone because we won’t see them for most of the summer, but yeah, it’s been really fun, and today was a great day.” Earlier in the week, Morgan took silver in the U-18 sprint race. “I wasn’t going into it expecting to do quite as well,” she said. “Getting that second place was amazing, because that was my first actual JNs podium besides the relays last year.” She said overall, this year’s competition was strong. Intermountain took seventh and ninth in the girls U-16 races, and shortly after, the event started to break down. The racers started picking up their bags and packing their skis. The saw horses came down, the signs no longer corresponded to a real presence of flow among the wax technicians. All the gold had been harvested, and the boomtown was collapsing for another year. |