First Competitions of the Winter

As some of you might know the reason that this is the first post of my winter season is due to the fact that I sprained my ankle pretty severely on the first day of winter jumping. However I have been going to Physical Therapy since then about three times a week. The weekend after Christamas I was given the green light by my therapist to try begin jumping. It was actually perfect timing because my team headed to Park City, Utah the day after Christmas. We headed over then and jumped that day marking my first day back jumping. I was very excited to be back on the snow, however I still needed to play it safe so I did not take as many jumps as my teammates did. The next day, Friday, was the day that we had the jumping part of the competition. I had a good jump for myself but I still jumped shorter than the kid that I had to beat in the skate race. The reason that I had to beat the athlete who jumped farther then me was because this competition was a qualifier for World Junior Championships which is the under 20 version of World Championships. I went to World Juniors last year as well so it was a major goal of mine to make this team again. They take five athletes to this competition and one athlete had already pre-qualified so he was not competing. I needed to get at least 4th place and anything better than that would help my bid to get onto this team. So overall this was a very important competition for me that I wanted to do very good at.    

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Ski jumps in Park City, Utah

On Friday we had the jumping part on the K90 hill as well which in the picture above is the jump on the left. In the jump competition I jumped to Fifth place which was pretty good for my third day of jumping this winter because of my ankle. In the race I started 1min and 17sec back from the leader and third & fourth started a minute ahead of me. Before the race I was more nervous than I usually am because this competition has such a big impact on my season. During the race I was able to catch up to third and fourth place. I skied with them for a little while and past them and was able to stay away from them for the rest of the race. This was one of the mentally hardest races I have ever done because I did not have as much endurance as I usually do because of my injury. During the race I had the thoughts going through my head about just slowing down a little so it wasn't as hard, however I was able to overcome that and stay away from the other athletes for the rest of the race. I ended the race in third place which earned me a spot on the World Junior Championship Team.

Testing at the Center of Excellence in Park City, Utah