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Good Afternoon MAST Families and Coaches:
I just received word that we can practice tonight. Please be sure that your son or daughter has a safe means of getting to and from practice. Remember, our practices are not mandatory so if you do not want to be driving tonight, or do not want your son or daughter to drive, feel free to stay home. We will have a practice for the Section IV athletes and alternates at 5pm on lane 3, and for all other Varsity and JV athletes from 6:30-8:45pm. Please meet on the South Chair for directed free skiing at 6:30. We will move to lanes 3 and 5 for gate training at 7:15. Practice is cancelled for Wednesday, February 6. Most of our coaches will be attending the Section IV Championships during the day on Wednesday. We don’t have enough coaches to support a practice Wednesday evening. But you have six other training sessions to choose from this week. I want to encourage all of you to continue training often and with focus this week and next Monday and Tuesday. Our season is too short due to high school rules that govern our sport. Make the most of the time we have together now in preparation for next season. We will have one final race at Hyland on Friday, along with one lane set aside for training. This is your last chance to see how much you have improved this season. I had hoped we could attract other high schools to join us, but it appears that several schools have had to re-schedule last week’s cancelled races for Friday. So as of now, we will be racing Washburn vs SW vs MAST. Since this will be a Friday race, I suggest that we race in FLANNEL (if you own something made out of flannel). Of course, flannel over a gs suit. If you do not wish to race, please send me an email. Otherwise, I will put everyone on the run order. Here is the schedule for the evening:
The last Supplemental Training is scheduled for Saturday at Welch. We are training on Bakke, a nice steep pitch. This is a great opportunity to gain experience on a challenging race hill, one of the best ones in the State. Click HERE to register. Check out the wonderful pictures on our website. So many happy faces. And consult the website for the latest calendar. See you soon. Mark Good Evening MAST Athletes, Parents and Coaches:
Holy Windchills Batman! It is chilly out there. Still wish we were skiing tonight though. (Well, not in these wind chills... but something slightly more moderate.) . Hopefully, Hyland and school will re-open on Thursday so we can get back to training. As I said in my last email, the race scheduled for Thursday at Welch has been cancelled due to the decision by Welch to close for the day. We will train on Thursday at 6:30PM if Hyland re-opens. I. Section IV Championship Teams The lead coaches have reviewed race results and selected the athletes who will represent MAST and their respective high schools at the Section IV Championships next Wednesday, February 6 at Wild Mountain. Congratulations to the athletes listed below. Please find attached a schedule for the day. Know that we will be loading the bus around 6am on Wednesday. I will give you more details about the day in a separate email. For now, please talk with your teachers on Thursday or Friday (whenever you return to school) about your absence from school on Wednesday, February 6. You will miss the entire school day. While you are out of school this week, you should wax, scrape and brush your skis DAILY to imbed your bases with wax. Repeated waxing makes skis fast. Just don’t overheat the bases. Parents: we need to supply one hand timer and one hand time recorder at the finish line. No experience is necessary. If you possess a mobile thumb and you can see, you can learn to operate a stop watch. If you still know how to scrawl your numbers, you can record hand times. If you can do either job, please send me an email. SECTION IV CHAMPIONSHIP TEAMS SW Boys:
SW Girls:
Washburn Boys:
Washburn Girls:
MAST Boys:
MAST Girls:
II. Wild Mt Supplemental Training for Section IV Championship Athletes and Alternates We have a supplemental training session scheduled for Saturday, February 2 at Wild Mt. With the Section IV Championships only one week away, we are limiting participation to the Section IV athletes and alternates as well as a couple of additional athletes. Click here for more information and a link to register for the Feb 2 Supplemental Training. III. Welch Village Supplemental Training on Saturday, February 9. The coaches have added one additional supplemental training session on Saturday, February 9 at Welch Village. This session is open to all MAST athletes. We hope to be skiing two lanes on Bakke or one lane on Bakke and one on Lookout. Either way, you will be testing the technical and tactical skills you have developed this season on steep terrain. If you will be returning next season, this is a great opportunity to gain experience on more difficult pitches. If you will be skiing in the State Meet a few days later, this is great preparation for Helsinki and Innsbrook. Click here for more information and a link to register for the Feb 9 Supplemental Training. If you plan to train at Welch, be sure to complete BOTH waivers for Welch Village. Here are the links to both: Welch Village Day Ticket Release Welch Village Race Release IV.Possible Race: Friday, February 9. I am working to schedule one last race at Hyland for all athletes. The race would likely start at 5:45 or 6PM. We have the lanes and timing scheduled. I am talking with a few teams to see if they are interested. Stay tuned. The website is up to date. Please check out the photo gallery. Fantastic pictures of fantastic teens. Thank you to Lisa Tanner for working so hard to memorialize our season with photos. More to come... Mark 612-275-8392 Good Morning MAST Families:
First, as you know, school is cancelled today, which means that practice is cancelled as well. I did send an email to the MPS Assistant Athletic Director to see if we can get permission to practice, but I have not heard back from him. For now, consider practice cancelled. If that changes, I will let you know. If you can get out to ski during the day today, I encourage you to do so. You can free ski on your own. Work the drills. Everyone should know what to work on. Given the cold temps moving in, I suspect that we will lose more training days this week. If the forecast for windchill temps holds, we will likely not be training on Wednesday, and we may have to cancel Tuesday as well. The race on Thursday at Welch is already cancelled. Welch is closing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If we can train Thursday, we will. But Thursday is not looking good either. The Hyland JV race is still a go. Second, the MAST banquet is scheduled for Sunday, March 17 at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Bloomington. Sabena Svedahl is chairing the banquet this year--THANK YOU SABENA!!! She is looking for other parents who would be willing to help plan and execute the banquet. If you are interested in helping, please contact Sabena. Third, I apologize for the delay in getting out race results from last week. We had a fantastic two days of racing on Thursday and Friday. In the Hyland JV race on Friday, Sam Leahy Johnson and Chloe Cumming skied to first place finishes to claim the first race victorious of their short careers. Congratulations Sam and Chloe. Other impressive results on the girls' side: rookie Kate Moore finished 2nd, Chloe Bitney 6th, and Caroline Claeson 9th. The boys had a great day as well, placing ten athletes in the top fifteen. Rookie Alex Barbatsis finished 3rd, Deven Svedahl 4th, Aiden Jurek 8th, Kai Lamb 9th, Lewie Bent 10th, Braeden Dahmes 11th, Levi Ehlers 13th, Maximus Davis 14th, and Alex Graff 15th. Well done boys. The varsity had a busy two days, skiing in TWO invitationals. Like the JV, the varsity teams performed very well. On Thursday, the teams traveled to the Gitchi Gummi Invitational at Mt Du Lac, which is just across the border near Superior, Wisconsin. Cold temps and gusting winds did not zap the spirit of competition in our skiers. Elsa Peterson placed first in the girls' competition, Rachel Tanner 4th, and Ahnika Berg 8th. MAST also had three boys in the medals with Luke Conway finishing 2nd, Zach Bion 4th, and Oliver Mueller 6th. In the team competition, the Washburn Boys came out victorious when all the points were added together for their top four finishers: Luke, Zach, Willem Robertson(14th) and Augie Bent(15th). Most impressive, all eight Washburn boys skied two clean runs on Thursday. Great job boys. The Southwest girls also came out victorious, beating a strong girls' team from Brainard. Scoring for SW were Elsa, Rachel, Addie Streble and Avery Taylor. Congratulations girls. On Friday, the competition moved to Afton Alps for the Afton Invitational. The competition was fierce with some of the State's best alpine teams entered. This would be a good test for our skiers. Rachel Tanner and Ahnika Berg both skied exceptionally well again to finish in the medals. Out of 135 girls entered, Rachel finished 2nd and Ahnika 10th. Also finishing high, Addie Streble place 15th and Anna Smalley came in 21st. The Southwest girls placed 4th in the team competition out of 17 teams, and Washburn placed 7th. On the boys' side, Luke Conway put down two impressive runs to place first out of 140 boys. And the Washburn boys placed third in the team competition behind perennial State Meet qualifiers Minnetonka and Stillwater. Athletes, please join me in thanking all the coaches and parents who made this racing marathon possible. We had the varsity at Mt Du Lac on Thursday, JV training at Hyland on Thursday, varsity racing at Afton on Friday, and JV racing at Hyland on Friday. To pull this off, we needed to split our paid and volunteer coaching staff. Everyone stepped up and helped out. Thanks a million. And thank you to the parents who helped work the races at Mt Du Lac and Hyland. Your assistance is deeply appreciated. Make the most of your day off. After shoveling your driveway and sidewalks, and your elderly neighbors', tune your skis so they are ready to go this week, get ahead on any homework you can, and go skiing if you can get there safely and with your parents' permission. I hope to see you tomorrow. Mark |
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