Master Ski Jumping In Lebanon, NH

With the crazy, hideously warm temperatures over the weekend it has pretty much put a damper on any ski jumping for the next several days until more snow can be blown.  Fortunately starting Tuesday night the temperature are looking quite good maybe all the way straight through Friday morning.  There might be a small shutdown period on Thursday.

 

The high on Saturday in Lebanon was 67 degrees.  The normal high is 28.  The record high was in the lower  60's.  To say this has been one unusual winter would be an understatement.  The overnight low on Saturday was just below 40, normally it would 10.  CRAZY!!!!!!

 

Crash

 

This is an article that was in the December 29th, 2006 Lebanon, New Hampshire Valley News

 

Ski Jumpers Show Off Their Mastery

By Erin Hanrahan

Valley News Staff Writer

 

LEBANON---From a wooden platform halfway up Lebanon's 50-meter ski jump, Gene Esquivel belts out a "Hey-O" and signals for the skier at the top to take off.  Seconds later, in a flash of neoprene and wooden planks, a man launches off the base of the jump and soars 30 feet through the air before the backs of his skis touch the man-made snow below.

 

As he took turns on the jump with Lebanon and Hanover High School skiers last night, few would guess that the man was actually 49-year old Lebanon coach Jon Farnham.  A tiny grunt on takeoff was the only clue to distinguish the masters ski jumper from his teenage team.  And even then, it was not exact.

 

For the past four years, Storrs Hill in Lebanon has played host to an evolving team of master ski jumpers, whose excitement for the sport, if not competition, is soaring.

 

"There was always a misconception that, if you didn't get into it when you were a kid, forget it," Farnham said, mounting skis for a new masters team member before the collective high school and masters practice last night.

 

Farnham said that, while the popularity of ski jumping has been waning among young athletes in recent years, he now has half a dozen adults who meet regularly at Storrs Hill to jump.  That may not sound overwheling, but it's twice the number on his high school team.  And New Hampshire is the only state left in the country in which high schools offer the sport.  Hanover and Lebanon are area schools with jumping teams.

 

"When it first started it was all kids, and now it's all masters," Farnham said, laughing.

 

This winter, his adult team is practicing up to three nights a week, and will compete in about six meets or so.  Last January, three members---including Farnham---went to Minnesota for the Masters Ski Jumping National Championships.

 

This year, Farnham says, he hopes to take four or five.

 

Team member Dan Brown, of Lebanon, took up the sport about five years ago, when he was 42.  "I skied when I was young," Brown said.  "But I moved to this area 10 years ago and just got into jumping."  Brown, too, went to Minnesota last winter for national championships, and plans to go to Wisconsin in January for this year's event.

 

From the ski jumper's hut on Storrs Hill, Farnham joked that he recruits his teammates by simply turning on the light in the hillside building and "waiting for people to get bored."

 

Farnham said adults will sometimes show up to his Tuesday and Thursday night practice sessions and ask to try out a 10-meter jump, which can be tackled with regular alpine skis.  He never says no, he said.  But only a fraction of those adult jumpers go on to try the hill's 25-meter jump, which is paved with plastic so it can be used year-round.  An ever fewer number move on to the 50-meter jump, where long, grooved jumping skis are required.

 

At the Olympic level, athletes launch off 90-and 120-meter jumps.  But, Farnham explained master jumpers rarely go higher than 64-meters.

 

Ryan Crawford, who also took up the sport as an adult, conceded that there were cerrtain setbacks to learning to ski jump at a later age.

 

"When you try it as an adult, you've got the fear factor," he said.  "You think 'If I break a leg, I'm gonna be out of work for six weeks.'  That's why a lot of people won't come out and do it.  They'll just let their kids do it."

 

Crawford said he has never broken a bone ski jumping, though he has spent months nursing black and blues.  His teammates call him "Crash."

 

Farnham skied as a youth in Hanover, but said he gave the sport up, like many athletes, after finishing school.  In 1982, the NCAA dropped ski jumping as a college sport, so jumpers now have few options after they reach the age cap on local U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association teams.

 

Known to his masters team as "Coach Cannonball," Farnham acknowledged the difficulty of getting adults into ski jumping.  But, he said, it's catching on.

 

"Because there's no NCAAs, kids tend to grow out of it," he said.  "But if you grab somebody who's 30, they only grow into it."

 

Farnham said he got back into the sport about 15 years ago, when his kids were old enough to start jumping.  At that point, he said, he was the only masters jumper around.  He practiced with Don West, a 69-year old ski jumper from Plattsburugh, N.Y., whom Farnham remembered as a masters jumper from the time when he was growing up.

 

Masters jumping, Farnham said, brought back all the joy of ski jumping without the competitive pressure he remembered from his youth.

 

Now, Farnham said, his goal each year is to jump his age in distance.

 

"Last year I was 48 and I jumped 47.5(feet).  The goal is to jump your age, and it gets harder," he laughed.

 

But flying off the jump at Storrs Hill, Farnham could pass for one of the teenagers on his high school team.  On the U.S. Masters Ski Jumpers Web site, www.skijumpeast.com, jumpers over 30 refer to themselves as "seniors" and "veterans," but embrace the title "Gamle Gutter," a Norwegian term translating to "old boys," because it is a reminder that "ski jumpers at any age must be playful and young at heart."

 

Preparing to launch off the Lebanon jump last night, masters jumper Bill Ryan referred to his indulgence in the sport as "my second childhood."

 

As Farnham, Ryan and their masters teammates jumped with local high school athletes, a crowd of teenagers gathered on the side of the jump to watch.  Climbing back up toward the top with his ski in one hand, Ryan smiled at them.

 

"Big time exhilarating," he said.