ARTICLE about JOs by John Novak

 

 

 

We, the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage are hosting this year’s Nordic Ski Jumping / Nordic Combined Junior Olympics.  The event will be taking place March 3 – 7, 2009 at our jumping complex at Hillside Park and trails at Kincaid Park.. The best Nordic jumpers from throughout the United State and Canada will be in our town.  You are invited to come and share in the excitement of the United State’s best Nordic jumpers showing their stuff.

 In addition to jumpers aged 15 and under, the competition also will have a “guest class” for older jumpers. In addition to jumping events, athletes also will compete in the Nordic Combined. In a Nordic Combined event, the first portion is competitors jumping.  Competitors then begin the cross country skiing portion of the event based upon their jump distances. There even is talk about having a “hurricane start” for one or more of the skiing events.

Team Alaska is hoping to improve upon their performance in last year’s Junior Olympics that were held in Ishpeming Michigan.  Team Alaska’s strong performance in the Nordic skiing last year was not  lost on the other teams. As Coach Doug Taylor noted at the time, “Our Alaska athletes would have been in the thick of things [in Nordic combined] had the cross county distances been longer than five kilometers.”

Coach Doug summed up the mind set of Team Alaska following last year’s competition as follows: “We next year will be competing [at Junior Olympics] on our home hill and cross country course.  Our athletes need to continue training hard in cross county skiing.  Most important to being competitive next year is for our athletes to improve their jumping.  I am confident that they can do so under the tutelage of new coach Dan Bevington and be in the hunt for medals in the Nordic Combined events.”

Our own ski jumping committee of NSAA has been busily planning the event for well over a year. We are in need of additional volunteers for us to be able to host the event.   Please contact Vicki Novak at north.novak@yahoo.com / 345-5402 or Pam Mamrol at Mamrol@gci.net  / 346-1035 if you are willing help as a volunteer. Whether your interest is in helping on the jumping hill, on the Nordic skiing trails, tending a barbeque grill, or in some other way, we can use you help.  A complete and detailed description of the Junior Olympic event agenda can be found on NSAA’s web site.  It is only with the help of readers such as you that we will be able to continue NSAA’s track record of doing an outstanding job of hosting national events.