Inside Edge: Five Sandpoint Nordic racers compete in Bozeman

World Cup Update — We hate to admit it, but the biggest news is in cross country where Jessie Diggins continues to amaze, this time by winning the World Cup 10K freestyle individual start in Falun, Sweden. She holds the World Cup lead.

Newcomer Isabella Wright grabbed her sixth straight points result with a 29th-place finish in super-G at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany. Luke Winters skied into 19th place in slalom at Chamonix in France. Then Breezy Johnson finished 20th in the second super-G, followed by Isabella Wright in 27th and AJ Hurt in 30th.

Youth Ski League — The Emerald Empire Youth Ski League held their first race of the season this past week. The event was hosted by SARS at Schweitzer Mountain. The event featured two giant slalom races each for boys and girls under the age of 12.

Conditions were great and the SARS crew ran their normal professional event. A number of local racers participated. We only report the top 15 results by age.

On the boys side, Jeru Gidley dominated the field with two gold medals in U12s and Wyatt Lemon captured ninth in the first race. Rhys Taylor took gold in the first U10 race, while Solen Landewehr was consistent, taking silver in both events. Brig Ambuen also had a big weekend, taking U8 gold and silver in a pair of races.

On the girls side, Halle Wyman placed ninth and 13th in U12’s. Elaina Stiller had a great start to the weekend, securing gold in the first U10 race, but was disqualified in the second. Jordan Lemon and Sophia Taylor each placed 14th in a race. Elsa Gidley took U8 silver in the first race.

The youth ski league gets a couple of weeks to train before meeting again at Mt. Spokane for slalom.

Independence Junior Race Series — The final night of the series is this Friday. The group raced hard in the bitter cold last week, and put down some good results.

The fastest boys were: Landon Buoy (23.59) and Anders Trygstad (25.45) followed by Bodie Pirlot (27.61). The fastest girls were: Halle Wyman (24.50) followed by Marley Bond-Brooks (22.91) and Faith Stephany (24.50).

The current leaders in the Most Improved category are Nori Rose and Taylor Naples, but there’s lots of racing left to do. The Snow Pirates are leading in the team category, followed by the Speedsters.

Racing resumes at 5:30 p.m. Friday, followed by hot cocoa, cookies and awards. See you there!

Intermountain Junior Qualifier — The Sandpoint Nordic race team traveled to Bozeman, Montana, to compete in the Intermountain Nordic division races on Saturday and Sunday. Due to COVID-19 restrictions that prevent Idaho teams from traveling to Washington for races, this race series presented a great opportunity for our local athletes.

Intermountain is one of the most competitive divisions in Nordic. Five Sandpoint Nordic racers competed in both distance and sprint skate races with over 200 racers from U14 to pro teams.

On Saturday, two of the team’s youngest racers, Isabella Waters, 11, and Jonas Benson, 12, skied a 3K course and finished 13th and 14th in 10:32 and 10:36 respectively.

Racing the 5.5K course were Callahan Waters, 13, Jett Longanecker, 15, and Fletcher Barrett, 14. They finished with times of 16:35, 17:30 and 19:15 respectively. Callahan had a breakout finish Saturday, placing seventh in a field of 37 U16 boys.

On Sunday, all skiers raced a 1.5K sprint course. Benson and Isabella had solid finishes in 4:06 and 4:17 respectively. In the boys U16 field of 36 racers, Longanecker captured sixth with a time of 3:10, followed by Callahan in 3:12 and Barrett in 3:36. Callahan’s time of 3:12 would have put him in first place in the U14 division. Congrats to the Sandpoint racers, who all had noteworthy finishes.

Potpourri — SARS and Independence racers head to Mt. Spokane this weekend for Evergreen Cup action. Watch here for the full report. Any comments, recommendations or contributions to this column may be sent to Shep Snow by email at shep@thesnowschool.com. Negative feedback should be sent to someone else.