Junior National Champion

Junior National week is over and I had a fun time and excelled in every way that i wanted to. In the individual jumping competition i jumped to 5th place and a personal best in the individual jumping. We had that jumping at night which was a very fun comp. The next morning was the individual cross race and because of my jumping the previous night i started 17 seconds behind the leader. As it was only a 5km race I tryed to catch the leaders as soon as i could. Once with them I caught my breath and then on the next big hill broke away and took the lead position. I was able to increase my lead as the race went on and I ended up finishing in 1st place approximately 30 seconds ahead of second place. I was super psyched with me results and my personal performance. 

---

The Final stretch of the individual race

That night we had the Elimination Jump Competition. Everyone gets one practice jump and then one to count. After the first round it is cut in half, my first round i jumped into the upper part of the group. The next round they cut it in half again and at this point it was a group of fourteen jumpers and again I jumped to the upper half of that. I had now made it to the second to last round and i was the only Nordic Combined jumper left, all the rest were special jumpers, i also was the only jumper who was not part of the Central division (they are the ski jumping powerhouse). My next jump I missed the cut off by half a meter which was a bummer but i still had fun going far that night.

---

Jumping in the Team Competition

The final day of competition was a team jump event in the morning and the skate race that afternoon. I was the final leg for our ski jump team and had two very solid jumps which helped us to get second place in the team jump competition. It was our last jump comp on that hill and it was a very fun comp, I put together two far jumps! Because of my jumping and my team mate Nicholas great jumping in the morning (he had some far jumps as well) we ended up starting in first position for the skate race. We were the two fastest kids on the course so we were concentrated on skiing as fast as possible and increasing our lead. We started 30 seconds behind second place and we ended up laping everyone besides top five because it was only a 1km loop that we did 3 times each. I skied the anchor leg which was cool to be tagged off in first position going into the last lap. We ended up finishing two minutes ahead of second place which in Nordic Combined is a very substantial winning lead. All in all I had a super fun time on this trip and finally accomplished my goal of becoming Nordic Combined Junior National Champion!

---