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Show Junior nordic racers show off what they learned on the road by Nan Chalat The members of the Park City Junior Nordic Team have come home with new polish after several weekends week-ends on the road. Somewhere along the way between Sun Valley, Pinedale and Jackson they hit their stride. Racing on their home town tracks last weekend, they looked smooth and confident. con-fident. The local racers had the pleasure of hosting their Intermountain In-termountain competitors for three days under blue skies at the Park City Municipal Golf Course and at Wasatch Mountain State Park. The hometown spectators got a chance to see how much their team has improved during the last month of competition. On Friday the teams raced on a hard, fast track in Park City, and Olin Glenne started the weekend out right with a third place in the JV (9 and under) boys division. Olin's class and the JIV (10-11-year-old) boys and girls each raced two kilometers. Megan Holcomb wasted no time in establishing her second-place position in the JIV girls' division. She was only 16 seconds behind the girl she has been trying to catch all season, Ntala Skinner Skin-ner of Pinedale, Wyoming. The rest of the classes all raced around the full five-kilometer five-kilometer loop. Holly Hunter followed in Megan's footsteps by finishing second in the JIII (12-13-year-old) class. Heidi Hunter had a bigger and tougher field to conquer in the JIII (14-17-year-old) race but she managed to come out fourth. Abbey Peterson, who just graduated into the ranks of theJIIIs, was 12th. Dave Van Luven set the pace for the weekend in the JIII boys' division with a third place finish behind Trevis Allen of Jackson and Darin Binning of Pinedale. Tony Chambers tied for fourth with Pat Harper of Sun Valley. Competition between these five remained strong all weekend. Hans Despain finished 8th and Mike Richards finished 10th. Saturday morning the teams congregated in Midway Mid-way at the Wasatch Mountain Moun-tain State Park where the seven-kilometer track was groomed to perfection. With a determined stride Megan Holcomb managed to close the gap behind Ntala to 510()ths of a second around a three kilometer loop. In the Jills Holly Hunter breathed hot on her competitor's neck over five kilometers and held onto second place. Heidi Hunter lost a little ground in the girls's JI and JII division (also racing five kilometers) but Abbey Peterson held her ground. The JI boys raced seven-and-a-half kilometers and Dave VanLuven, Tony Chambers and Hans Despain had trouble holding onto their ranks. Trevis Allen bumped VanLuven into fourth place and Chambers dropped to sixth. Despain and Richards ended up in ninth and eleventh places respectively. On Sunday in Park City, the home team was back on track with several impressive im-pressive individual lap times in the three-man relay race. Tony Chambers matched Binning's fastest lap time and VanLuven was just 3100ths of a second behind. The Junior Nordic Team is scheduled to compete in Pinedale, Wyoming next weekend in preparation for the upcoming Junior Olympic Olym-pic qualifying races in Lake Placid at the end of the month. If II WMmmllUitJkmmmmmJKS |