The Boothbay Region High School Nordic skin g teams are off to a good and relatively early season. Despite the cancellation of the Saturday, Jan. 6 Telstar Relays and the teams only having had one race at Sugarloaf – Billy Chenard Memorial Race on Saturday, Dec. 16 – the teams could not be asking for much more, said Coach Nick Scott.

“It was a great opportunity to get out and ski on some excellent early season snow conditions,” said Scott. “Not many of our athletes skied in that particular race as many are new to the sport and just hadn't had the opportunity to practice much at that point.”

Each team had only two athletes participating in the race – for the boys, team captain Blake Erhard and Henry Drapeau; and for the girls, Summer Chamberlain and Hali Goodwin.

Of 59 girls, Chamberlain took 33^rd in 13:33 and Goodwin took 46^th in 14:37. Of 69 boys, Erhard took 15^th in 9:32 and Drapeau took 64^th in 14:53.

However, Scott said “the bigger story” is the amount of snow the Boothbay Region has gotten and how early it has arrived.

“Over the last seven years that we have had a Nordic program at school we have never had skiable snow before Christmas break. The quality of snow that we now have is something that we have not had around the school this early in January.”

Scott praised the four athletes especially Erhard who he said “skied exceptionally well,” nearly placing in the top 10. Erhard raced neck and neck with five other competitors close enough that anyone could have taken the top 10 spot.

Said Scott, “I'm really excited to see how being able to practice so regularly on snow at school every day will affect our results as we progress through the season.”