The Ski Team started their season with dryland preseason practices that started on Monday November 28th. The team continued dryland practices throughout the end of November, and throughout the entire month of December. The first on-snow practice was scheduled to start on January 3rd, but due to rain and snow conditions, the practices and race for the first week were canceled. All practices and races that were scheduled for the week of January 2nd are now being pushed back a week, and the rest of the schedule will follow the same. The first race is now scheduled to be held at 5pm on January 13th at Mount Peter. The schedule, race dates, results, and the list of racers are all found on the hsskireg.com website.
The BHS team was put into Conference C this year which includes Wayne Valley, Delbarton, Bernards, and Jefferson High School. Schools are usually organized into conferences by their location to the mountains, so they can all get to the races or practices around the same time. According to members of the NJISRA board, this year due to the gaining and losing of different teams, and the number of racers, the conference organization switched up substantially after last season.
The first three ski races of the season will be slalom, followed by the last three being giant slalom. After the six regular races of the season, teams will have a chance to qualify for states by racing in the Petro Race, which allows the top 3 placing teams for both girls and boys to qualify for states. After team states, the top 40 individual ski racers on both the girls and boys team would qualify and race in the Race of Champions; the individual state championships. The regular season ski races through NJISRA will take place at either Mount Peter in NY, Winter for Kids in NJ, Mountain Creek in NJ, or Blue Mountain in PA.
This year the team has three seniors, on the girls team Summer Schnabolk and on the boys team Max Lukes and Tucker Edwards. Although in past years there had been a very small girls team, the girls team this year will have 9 members; 6 being on varsity, and 3 competing on the junior varsity level. The girls team consists of 3 freshmen, 3 sophomores, 2 juniors, and one senior. The boys team has two seniors, and 4 juniors. Following the loss of many seniors last year, the team is determined to continue the success they saw last season, like the Boys varsity team making it to team states, 2022 graduate Austin Tondo making it to the Eastern Regional Championships, and many seniors making it to the Race of Champions.
Despite many changes occurring over the past few years due to COVID the team has continued to adapt and persevere. Both the girls and boys team are looking strong and competitive, and are looking forward to starting the official season.
