Jumping Journal: February 16, 2008

Well, another interesting stretch of no jumping...let's see.

 

Wednesday provided for a nice mixed bag storm.  It was all snow until 5-6AM when I started seeing sleet at my house.  By 9AM is was pretty much all rain everywhere.  The temperatures never really got all that high but the rain fell a good chunk of the day and then the temperatures dropped overnight and that led the way for a very crusty mess to be dealt with.

 

Thursday was spent attempting to get the jumps back in shape.  I spent the evening working on the landing hill stairs on both the K25 and K50.  I made it down to 40 meters or so on the K50 before I called it a night.  I had spent the day fighting with the crusty mess and it had taken its toll on me.

 

Friday after spending most of the day shoveling more of the crusty crap I headed over to Andover for the high school state meet.  I was pretty much toast before high noon ever arrived yet alone by the time 4:30PM came around.  It turned out that the boys cross-country state meet was postponed from Wednesday to Friday thanks to the storm.  They delayed the start of the ski jump meet until 6:30.  I decided to take the evening off and save it up for today instead.  During the meet I was talking with some of the coaches.  Chris Jones, Ryan Nicholson and I was standing around talking with one another.

 

Ryan started jumping the small hills in 2000 and took off and really took jumping serious in 2001 and was jumping the K90 in no time flat.  He was jumping close to the national level before he retired from competition/jumping at the end of US Nationals in 2005.  Turns out he did put the skis back on for the first time in over two years a couple of weeks ago and jumped the K90 in Lake Placid.  Now Ryan helps coach the Hopkinton High School ski jumping team durning the winter months.

 

Chris was jumping at the same time as Ryan.  After he graduated from high school he took a year and went out to Coleraine, MN and spent the year jumping on the K70 as well as coaching the small hills.  Chris's brother Danny is a senior this year in high school and was one of the favored jumpers at the state meet last night.

 

Chris was planning on coming up to Lebanon today to jump the K50 before the candy bar tomorrow.  A couple of the Hopkinton kids were planning on coming up and jumping during the practice session today and jump the meet tomorrow.  How do you say Chris and I both kept putting on the pressure on Ryan to bring his skis with him and take some jumps. I haven't jumped with Ryan since probably 2004.

 

It ended up being one of the tightest state meets I can remember, a tie for second and a tie for fifth and not all that much room between first and fifth place.  Cooper Dodds ended up winning with Joe Merrow from Hopkinton coming in a tie for second with Parker Haynes from Kennett.  Danny Jones, Chris's brother, came in fourth.  Jeff Colt from Hanover tied for fifth.  I didn't even have Joe on my radar screen.  I hadn't seen him jump enough recently to realize how well he was jumping.

 

At the end of the evening Chris and I was still trying to talk Ryan into bringing the skis with him when he came up to Lebanon today.

 

I arrived at Storrs Hill this morning and saw Cannonball and Dan working on the bottom steps on the landing hill on the K50.  Pretty soon Dan came into the jump inn and we suited up and headed on up the hill.  A high school student from Concord High School showed up to jump with us as well.

 

From talking with Jay in between jumps he told me Cannonball had him remove quite a bit of snow in the transition on the landing hill.  It had been piling up thanks to all the snow we have had this winter.  I noticed on the first jump it seemed like the transition was much quicker/sharper than normal.  On the second jump I ended up gettin caught by the transition and set down and rode the outrun to a stop on my hands/butt.

 

The rest of the morning session went pretty decent.  I was typically jumping around 35 meters.  I wasn't making it down the hill very far but it did seem like I was jumping late and I wasn't jumping with much power.

 

As we stopped for lunch break it seemed like it was only going to be Chris and I jumping in the afternoon. When I got back from lunch I found Ryan Nicholson was there and before he could say anything I noticed a rather unfamiliar jump suit hanging up.  The smile was plastered across my face.  I couldn't wait to jump with Ryan again.  Two of his kids was also on the way and shortly afterwards Chris showed up.  We suited up and headed back up the jump for a fun afternoon of jumping.

 

It truly is amazing watching some of the big hill boys come back and jump the small hills.  I remember earlier this year watching Cooper Dodds come back and jump the K50 after he hadn't jumped anything much smaller than a K90 all winter long.  Even more intriguing was watching him several days later jump the K25 during a high school meet.  I knew it would be interesting to see Ryan jump the K50 when he had only taken four jumps in the past two years and each of them was on the K90 in Lake Placid.

 

Ryan adjusted quite nicely and quite quickly.  He had pretty much settled himself down by his second jump and by his third jump he was holding the position nicely.

 

Now the talk is about trying to develop an eastern seniors team as it sounds like Pat Hudson will end up coming back out next year since he is sitting this year out after hurting his ACL when playing soccer.

 

The afternoon session seemed to go even smoother than the morning session.  I still wasn't jumping on time like I should...I'm not sure why.  The last jump I was quite late.

 

All in all I ended the day with 14 jumps.  With the nice sunny skies, but rather cold temperatures, low 20s at best, I had one of the few days this year when I was actually in the minority class.  I'm use to be one of the majority(masters) class on the K50 anymore.  Today was definitely a different story.

 

Crash