You can now find signups for our Eastern Cup team trips at the MNC Registration page. A few notes on these team trips:
This season MNC will offer three “team trip” options for Eastern Cups. The team has grown and grown each year, and it has gotten harder and harder to handle the logistics of all athletes at all events. In some cases, clubs will avoid team trips entirely (for example, Craftsbury expects their athletes to handle lodging, meals, travel on their own). Other teams will only travel as a team (for example, SMS will house and transport all of their athletes to races and handle meals too).
MNC operates in a bit of a hybrid model. This year, we will offer team trips that include:
- Travel (in van) from VT to the race site on Friday.
- Course preview ski at venue on Friday afternoon
- Lodging in either hotel (EC1) or house (EC3, EC4) for the duration of the trip
- Meals for the duration of the trip
- Travel (in van) back to VT after the conclusion of Sunday races
Note that these team trips do NOT include wax/race support fees, which are handled separately for all athletes.
These “team trips” will have space for 10 athletes…this is a number that is manageable for the van (which allows some seats taken out to fit personal gear, as well as 1-2 seats for coaches in addition to Adam) as well as a manageable number of athletes for coaches to facilitate in addition to other coaching duties on race weekend.
In the interest of reducing complications, these trips are an all-or-nothing situation. It’s too complicated to involve, for example:
- Travelling in a personal car, but staying in the team lodging
- Travelling in the team van, but staying in another hotel/house
The exception to this is team meeting/team activity time, which takes place the night before each race. The more of the team we can get in one place, the better in terms of having our pre-race meeting and group team building activity. Parents and skiers attending race weekends separate from team trips are still of course encouraged to stay at the same hotel(s)!
Preliminary schedule and costs for 2021/2022 Includes all travel, lodging, and meals
Eastern Cup #1, Waterville ME
Holiday Inn Express, Waterville
$319 team trip
Eastern Cup #2, Lake Placid NY
Rental house, near venue
$249 team trip
Eastern Cup #3, Craftsbury VT
No team trip
Eastern Cup #4, Dublin NH
Rental house, Bennington NH
$189 team trip
How do I get my skis ready? What is “race support”?
Race support fees can be paid as one up-front cost (for those planning to attend all EC races) or can be paid per-weekend. These costs go toward a lot of factors: mainly, compensation for coaches who are testing skis, waxing skis, helping organize and facilitate a race weekend, wax trailer costs, and more. In fact, the smallest portion of the race support fee is the physical wax itself, however those costs are certainly not insignificant.
Racers typically drop skis off with Adam on Wednesday or Thursday. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: please drop off skis CLEAN and SCRAPED/BRUSHED whether skate or classic. Clearly label kick zones, and put your NAME on all your skis with permanent marker!
