Cross country athletes in Grades 4 through 7 will be coming from all over the province to participate in the BC Midget Championships.
The event runs Feb. 16 and 17 at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre.
The term midget indicates this age bracket of athletes. Boys and girls will participate in a two-kilometre interval classic race on Saturday morning. The afternoon will see boys and girls form four-person relay teams to ski a technical 1.5 km course with two legs of the race being skate technique and two legs classic.
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On Saturday evening, organizers will host up to 500 athletes and coaches in a banquet at the Priest Valley Gym where the crowd will be entertained and awards presented for that day’s races.
Sunday will start with a time trial in the skate technique on a 300m course that will seed the athletes for an exciting round of King’s Court sprint heats. This format of racing allows everyone to continue racing with the top-three athletes moving up and the bottom-three athletes move down into brackets for a series of heats.
Final awards will wrap up the event Sunday afternoon at Sovereign Lake Nordic and the top club will take home the aggregate trophy.
Organizers would like to thank the many sponsors that have offered support for the provincials and welcome any spectators that want to come and see young athletes giving it their all and having a great time while doing so.
* A strong contingent from young to old represented Sovereign Lake Nordic Club at the recent Teck BC Cup in Revelstoke.
Two days of racing in pleasant conditions generated many podium appearances for the club.
Revelstoke Nordic hosted Classic Sprints on Day 1 where distances ranged from 150-metres to 900m on technical courses.
The Atoms category had Leo Markson place third, Ursula Palmer-Bird sixth, Matti Lane 10th and Cassie Mae O’Connor 12th.
Eula Palmer-Bird was second in Pee Wee Girls, and Eva Rosen thirdrd for Bantam Girls.
Paige Latta landed third on the podium for Junior Women. Junior Boys saw Torin Andrews place second and Taschi Klaschka took gold.
Masters slkiers raced a five-km distance in the classic technique and Damian Pighin took third, Paul Hardy was first and Marta Green second in their age groups.
Day 2 saw mass start races in all the categories utilizing the skate or free technique.
Once again SLNC hit the podium in many age groups.
1.5km Atom Girls: Cass Mae O’Connor third; 2km Pee Wee Boys: Lex Hostyn second; for Pee Wee girls Eula Palmer-Bird was second.
Juvenile Boys skied 7.5km and Lucas Sadesky took second with Torin Andrews fourth.
Junior Boys also skied 7.5km and Klaschka landed third on the podium.
Junior Girls skied 7.5km with Clara Hardy fifth. The lone Sovereign Lake Junior Women, Paige Latta, took silver but was 0.6 sec off gold.
The Masters had a good showing as well. In the Men’s 10km, Paul Hardy was third, Glen Stiven fourth and Mike Bell second. For the Masters Women’s 10km, Josee Leclerc and Lori Borchert were second in their respective age groups.
There were many other participants skiing hard over both days and coach Eric de Nys is pleased to see the growth of the clubs participation in these events.
roger@vernonmorningstar.com
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