Jumping Journal: February 15, 2009

A day goes as planned.. That's unheard of.

 

Spent yesterday morning and early afternoon at the Newport jumps trying to get the K32 ready for the jump meet today.  Since Mother Nature had warmed things up so nicely only to drop the temperature right back down the simple problem was all the slush had turned to ice...including the slush on the inrun.  Cutting the track would turn out to be, by far, the biggest task of the getting the hills ready for the meet.  Normally it would only take 10-15 minutes to cut the track but instead, thanks to the ice, it took well over an hour to get the whole track cut.  After getting the hill painted we called it a day and decided to do the last little bit of decorating the hill this morning.

 

I arrived at the hill to find quite a few cars already in the parking lot.  It sounded like their could easily be 20-30 jumpers at the meet and to see as many cars in the parking lot so early I was tending to think it was going to happen.  I suited up right away and then waited for the hill to open for practice.

 

It was great seeing several faces I haven't seen around a ski jump in a few years.  Some were adults and others were kids I have jumped with in the past but they have went off to college and I haven't seen them in years.

 

Newport is well known for having the wind funnel right up the jump and today was no different.  In the fashion of the past several days while working at the hill the wind was blowing straight up the hill quite nicely.  This was a big change from Friday evening at state meet when the wind was blowing straight downhill at Andover.  The sunny skies from late Friday had held through the whole weekend and the temperature was right at the freezing point midday today during the competition.

 

Everyone started heading up the jump and I followed behind.  After several jumpers had taken their first jump it was my chance for the first practice jump of the session.  I got the signal from Dave McCrillis and headed down the inrun.  The track was pretty decent.  It had a few small wobbles in it but nothing compared to when we cut the track the first time this winter.  I saw the flags on the takeoff blowing straight up the tressel before I started down the inrun.  I had forgotten about them until I got in the air and was getting hit head on with the wind.  It really caught me off guard and I reacted and didn't hold onto the jump like I should have.  I ended up landing somewhere around 24 meters maybe even a little higher up the hill than that.

 

I walked back up and the second, third and fourth jumps were each getting better but I still wasn't getting the distance I knew I could/should be getting given the conditions.  I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but I was getting it more and more correct with each passing jump.

 

By about jump five I was starting to get back down the hill once again.  I found out yesterday morning I had been wrong.  I thought I had been jumping 26-27 meters on a good jump at Newport.  When I helped get the tape measure stretched out so Ron could paint the landing hill I found I was actually jumping closer to 28-29 meters usuaully.  I knew it looked a little strange seeing the tree where the hill record(34.5 meters) is/was located and seeing the light pole where I was normally landing(I thought it was 27 meters, turns out its 29 meters) and thinking they were a whopping 7 meters apart.  They aren't.

 

The rest of the practice session was nice and solid.  All the jumps were going down around 28-29 meters.  I couldn't ask for more solid jumping under the circumstances even if I tried.

 

After taking a bit of a lunch/registration break the competition got underway with the small kids and continued to advance on up to the Out of School class, yes the ol timers.

 

My first jump during the competition wasn't all that hot.  I ended up with only a 25.5 meter jump.  I was ay short of the light pole.  I wasn't surprised.  I always seem to choke whenever it comes to a competitive environment.

 

The last person to come off the jump for the first round was the older brother of the current hill record.  Chris Jones has won two of the past McCrillis Cup competitions.  His brother Danny set the hill record two years ago.  I ran back up the stairs to the 34.5 meter mark.  There was no one there marking yet until I said something.  Chris jumped and had one of the nicest looking jumps I've seen in a long time.  He came down right at 34.5 meters.  After getting back up to the knoll he said he had no interest in breaking the record he wanted the record to be known as being held by the Jones brothers.

 

My second jump was slightly better than the first but I still was ending up short of where I normally would land.  I ended up with a 26 meter.  I wasn't the happiest with it but I wasn't surprised.

 

Chris came down and bobbled in the air and landed at 33.0 meters.  It almost gave the feeling that he intentionally screwed up the jump to keep from breaking his brothers record.

 

My third jump ended up being the longest of the competition at 26.5 meters.  It felt the smoothest of the comp round jumps at least.

 

Before heading up for the final jump Chris said he was thinking of telling his brother to take a hike and he would go ahead and break the record.  He came down for his final jump.  Several markers were all standing right at 35 meters, me included.  I watched his beautiful jump come in and land right at 35 meters on the mark.  It was one of the sweetest jumps I have ever seen.

 

All in all Chris ended up winning the overall meet as well as the Out of School class.  I ended up coming in third in the same class right behind Bill Ryan.  23 potential competitors showed up for the meet, one(a newer jumper) decided the hill was bigger than what she was willing to try just yet.  One of the former Sunappe High School jumpers took five or six jumps in practice.  He crashed on his first two jumps and banged up his shoulder and decided not to compete.  That left 21 competitors to compete for the McCrillis Cup that Chris ended up winning.

 

Definitely one of the nicest, most relaxing jump meets I've been to since I started ski jumping.  At least things went as I thought they might go for a change.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come the rest of the winter.

 

Crash