One of the factors that has made HURT nordic a truly tough team to overthrow in the club championship points series is athlete depth in multiple fields of racing; a that fact was truly on display at the 2016 Empire State Winter Games. Back in 2015, it was a heavy-loaded HURT masters group that amassed a huge point tally, nabbed massive hardware and carried the weekend for the team. This year, the Masters team was much smaller than usual (although still boasting some very solid age group talent from Ed Luban, Chris Yarsevich, Tim Huneck, Jill Koziol and Eric Hamilton) and it looked like the door might be open for The-Club-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named to steal winning points, especially on their home turf.
It was not to be thanks to the army of HURT juniors that rallied to stomp all over the ESG podiums. It was a massive display of current and up-an-coming talent.
It began with the Friday prologue...HURT juniors (having just finished a rescheduled Section 2 relay hours earlier) set fast times on the course sent several skiers into the Saturday sprint heats. Fastest time on the day went to Owen Putman's 3:16 followed closely by A. Huneck's 3:19. Brian Beyerbach showed he is rising sprint talent with a top 5 overall finish as a U16, toppling some hefty U18 names in the process. In the heats on Saturday it was Owen and Brian who stood 1-3 on the men's podium. On the women's side Anna Wiedmann nabbed a top 5 finish and was the top U16.
In Saturday's freestyle women's 5K U16 race HURT placed 4 juniors in the top 10 with Anna being joined by Julianne, Meghana and Maddie. In the 5K U16 boys race HURT went 1, 2, 3 and that was nearly matched in 10K men's race as HURT put 4 in the top 10 (three of those were U18's)
Sunday saw Brian back on the podium in the top spot with Bryce Beyerbach and Alex Fragomeni both in the top 6. All our top performances were supported by many other solid points-earners over the weekend Nathaniel Kinkaid, Justin Caron, Nino Manzella, Daniel Manzella and Thomas Wiedmann all walked away with points on the weekend and helped HURT win the points weekend.
We look forward to seeing our juniors wrap up their high school season at Sectionals and States in the coming weeks and many of the ski on into the post-season at U16's, Eastern High School Championships and Junior Nationals.
Our Master's will have one more chance to flex their strong team muscles at the NYSSRA-Nordic Championship Weekend at the end of the month. We look forward to seeing you on your local man-made gerbil-wheel until "winter" arrives (that's right....we still haven't lost hope :/)
Enjoy the pics from the ESG weekend! Full results and times are found here: http://nyssranordic.org/results/
Brian storming the freestyle course
Dan Manzella charging the jumps hill
A lot of green and gray on that podium
Eric Hamilton locking down the M9 podium
U16 girls DEPTH!
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