By john Schultheis      All photos

As I am writing this, we just completed the first race weekend of the 2003-2004 Open League racing season. Sean Powers and Courtney Berger ran a great weekend for a Lodge full of Après racers.

Seventeen racers went to Homewood for a Race Clinic on Friday. For the first hour we only saw 3 other people (not counting Homewood employees) on the hill. We broke into two groups for the clinic.

One group had "Dirk" as the coach. Dirk was an intense guy. He was very loud and aggressive, almost like a military Drill Instructor. He was very animated, telling us that we needed to "CRUSH" everything. We needed to "CRUSH" the front of our boots; we needed to "CRUSH" the carbon fiber. We needed "SHIN TO WIN" in reference to pushing forward against the ski boots. Most of the guys really liked him. He told us a really key thing: When you are taking a clinic or just free skiing, you work on TECHNIQUE; when you are racing, you focus on TACTICS.

We started off with some drills (some of which really never made any sense at all) focusing first on balance. Then we skied some gates. There were stubbies in place above and below the gates to force people to initiate and finish their turns early. Some people had trouble with the stubbies, but they did their job.

After three hours of drills and skiing and CRUSHing, we all regrouped for lunch, and then we just skied the mountain for a while.

It was a very good day with sunny skies in the morning. The views of Lake Tahoe from the ridges at Homewood are truly breathtaking. The winds kicked up in the afternoon, and the lake was covered with whitecaps.

Friday night Courtney provided hors d’ouvres and a dinner of tacos (beef and chicken; some assembly required) and killer cookies for dessert. We finished the night with waxing of skis and training a bunch of rookies on how to play Cranium Hoopla, the unofficial game of the Après Race Team.

Saturday breakfast was hot and hearty, with eggs and bacon and pancakes to name a few things.

On Saturday we had the very first race of the season, a Giant Slalom (GS) race at Homewood. As expected the lodge at Homewood was terribly congested during registration. There were a lot of rookie racers in many of the clubs, plus a lot of "old friends" getting reacquainted.

The Novice course was longer than usual, starting about one-third of the way down Hidden Vein. It was challenging, but it was a good course. The Intermediate classes raced on the same section of the hill with the gates moved over a bit to make it a little bit tougher. The Advanced classes started from the top of the hill, and used the Intermediate course for the bottom section. The course got pretty torn up, and there were a lot of crashes for the Advanced racers.

On Saturday the weather was great, with clear skies and a beautiful mirror-finish lake in the background. There were some high clouds set against the blue sky, but the wind never was a factor. It was like spring conditions.

The Après race team did incredibly well on Saturday. We still only have preliminary results, but it looks like we earned over 120 points for Saturday, well above the 95 points per race average that won the Championship last year.

Each first time racer (also known as Rookies) ran on the Novice course until it was determined which class they each belonged in. This year’s crop of Rookies was wonderful. We had men that ended up in almost every class from 5 to 10, and the women were distributed from 8 to 10 plus two snowboarders. That will ensure that we have racers in a wide range of classes, which will maximize our opportunities for team points.

In addition several returning racers got strikes for going faster than expected for their classes (this is a good thing!). We had a number of people taking first or second place in their classes.

Saturday evening we returned to the Lodge for hors d'ouvres and a delicious roast pork dinner. In addition we had salad and pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and mini-baguettes and green beans and a TON of decadent desserts. It was fabulous. We had all the racers staying at the Lodge, plus some extra members and guests for dinner.

After dinner we had another rousing game of Hoopla, and some people did some ski tuning in the wonderful shed.

Sunday we started the day early with a hot breakfast of eggs with ham and cheese and all sorts of other goodies.

The Sunday race was a Slalom at Boreal. We arrived early, so we were able to park right up close to the front. Registration was much better as everyone had things figured out finally. Our Rookies found out what classes they would be racing in, and we all set out for the race hill.

The Novice race was delayed more than an hour because the hill was not wired for a starting gate. The mountain staff had to splice and run wires down to the starting gate, and that took forever. Once they got everything wired, the races rolled quickly, but they never did completely get back onto schedule.

In the Novice classes, we again had several class winners and a number of top three finishers. Our Novice woman snowboarder Renee Ste Germaine took first place both days. I think that it is safe to say that our Novice racers got a lot of points on Sunday.

The Intermediate Boarders and the Advanced Boarders ran on a nice course from the top of the hill. The course was set using special Snowboard gates. Open League is the only local league that does this.

The Intermediate ski course had a confusing series of gates that messed up a whole bunch of people. About one-quarter of the racers missed one particular gate and were disqualified. However, I don’t think any of the Après racers made that mistake.

In order to save time, the Advanced classes used the same course as the Intermediate with a few minor adjustments to eliminate the confusing gate. By the end of the Advanced classes, the course had humungous ruts. It was like racing down a mogul field!

There were a lot of real good performances by Après racers at these races; Joe Giammarco beating everyone in a new class, Randy Salzman tearing up the snowboard courses, Kristin Thornquist renting better skis and killing the competition, Sandy Kiyomura dominating her class on Sunday, Laura Bryan and Sean Powers getting strikes on Saturday. . . the list goes on and on. The single best performance had to be Rookie Mark Nave in his first races ever. Mark did so well that he moved all the way up to class 5 on his first day, and he placed second in his class both days, earning big points. That is phenomenal.

It’s hard to judge exactly how we did as a team on Sunday, but I believe that our Novice racers did so well that we should be in a very strong position after these first two races. We still have a long way to go, but I am confident that we will end up at the top of the Open League once again.

The most important thing is that everyone had a real good time, both at the Lodge and on the slopes. We are all looking forward to the next race weekend where we hope to do it all over again.