This Wednesday, All-Gender Nordic Skiing competed at the Lakes Region Championship. Its Boys finished sixth out of nine, and Girls, eighth among seven other schools.
Typically, skiers compete in either a Five-Kilometer Skate or Classic Skiing race. However, the Lakes Region Championship instead featured both categories in a duathlon.
“Today was a really unique meet. It was a duathlon, which means the first half of the race was Classic Skiing and then halfway through, you switch your skis and poles into Skate Skiing which is really hard to practice for,” said Sebastian Vermut ’27.
Head Coach Keith Robinson ’96 highlighted Sage Preston ’25, who placed 17th overall in the Girls events with a time of 19:10.8. Coach Robinson also commended Lauren Montgomery ’25 for her impressive comeback and Luke Williamson ’25, who placed 21st overall among 73 boys with a time of 16:40.4.
“Sage Preston had a really good race. She finished 17th in the race and ended up like 15th in the league overall for the year across all of our races. Lauren Montgomery also did well,” said Coach Robinson. “She also caught a Middlesex girl right at the end and passed her 100 yards before the finish.”
Like most, this race was not without its challenges – Vermut praised Adrian Werner ’25 for persevering through a fall.
“Adrian Werner had a really good race. He was really feeling it in the beginning, [and] he was able to pace out his classic really well. Towards the end in the skate part of the race, he was able to get into good speed skating form. He did fall, but he was able to come back from that and finish really strong,” said Vermut.
The Lakes Region course had notable uphill terrain, and Preston emphasized the difficulty of switching mid-race from classic to skate skiing.
“You have to switch your entire get up mid-race. There’s a lot of anxiety about that, especially because this was a very hilly course, extremely hilly for [about] 75% of the time. I was talking to a lot of the girls from other teams before the race started. There was a lot of apprehension about how [the race] was going to go. But at the end, a lot of people found it easier than we expected,” said Preston.
According to Vermut, the team was accustomed to practicing each style of skiing individually, but lost time especially during the transition.
“One of our strengths was that we’ve been able to practice both classic and skate. We’ve had multiple races in each so we definitely knew what we were doing. We wished we could’ve spent a little more time practicing the transitions. At least for me, I noticed that I was struggling with being quick and making sure I was not wasting any time. That’s something that’s really hard to practice, especially since it’s really unique to only this race,” said Vermut.
Coach Robinson reflected on the practices leading up to this meet and how the team had to adapt to weather challenges obstructing them from working on ski skills. The team will focus on maintaining fitness heading towards the final meet of the season.
“The first two days of this week, there was a lot of waxing skis to prepare because they did both classic and skis for this race. It was half, two and a half kilometers, classic and then switched to skis and poles and did two and a half kilometers of skating. Everybody needed to prep double the skis of normal, so it took a lot of time to wax. Then with the wind, it was not very good skiing on campus. We just had them kind of doing fitness and prepping the skis to be ready,” said Coach Robinson. “We’re going to be trying to maintain the fitness and keep working on things like holding good form, keeping endurance, and then later in the week, just tapering down and getting ready for that final race.”
Next Saturday, February 29, Nordic Skiing will partake in the NEPSAC Championships at the Dublin School.
