Lucas Gairns has been there before and he knows the drill.
But this is going to be the first time Hayes Layton, Charlotte Gibson and Melinda Kobasiuk will be thrown to the wolves when they compete next weekend in the 26-country Whistler Cup alpine skiing championships.
The 15-year-old Gairns is one of the senior members of the Prince George Alpine Ski Club and this will be his last chance to compete internationally at the youth level before he moves up to FIS racing next season.
Gairns is coming off an eighth-place slalom result (in a field of 104 athletes) Sunday at the CanAm championships at Panorama near Invermere. He also had three top-30 results, which bodes well for him next weekend at Whistler, where he will face some of the world's top 15-and-under ski racers.
"Lucas is the only returning athlete and he's been doing really well," said Prince George Alpine Ski Team head coach Kali Holahan. "That was a national event and I think he had a lot of fun there. It exposed him to a different calibre of athletes that he doesn't race with on a regular basis and that opened his eyes up to some different training techniques and different warm-up techniques."
Kobasiuk, 12, posted third- and ninth-place slalom results at Panorama. Layton's best provincial run came Saturday when the 13-year-old was ninth in a giant slalom and he was 16th the following day. Gibson, 13, tracked down three top-30 results.
Another of the Prince George club's rising stars, Jacob Hoskins, 11, finished third overall in slalom in his age group and won moguls at the Hub International Nancy Greene Ski League Sun Peaks Festival last weekend. The weekend before that, he posted a second-place finish at the provincial championships at Big White near Kelowna.
"Lucas, Melinda and Jacob are our three highlights for the different age categories this year," said Holahan.
In other Nancy Greene top-10 results, Katie Devlin placed third in the under-six girls dual slalom and moguls events, while her nine-year-old sister Peyton was fourth in moguls and fifth in dual slalom. In the under-10 girls category, Adree Brulotte was third in moguls and ninth in dual slalom and Abigayl Bertucci (under-six girls) was seventh in dual slalom and eighth in moguls. Isaac Hausot (under-10 boys) finished eighth in moguls.
The local club skiers has had ideal training conditions at Purden Mountain Ski Resort 60 kilometres east of the city and with new snow Wednesday, Holahan says they expect to get in another solid weekend of training on the local slopes before they make the trek south next Wednesday.
The Prince George club will send 14 skiers to the North zone championships at Hudson's Bay Mountain in Smithers, April 7-9, the final competition of the season. The zone finals also include a ski cross event, which will give the Prince George team a chance to compete in the event clubmate Tiana Gairns won at nationals and on the NorAm circuit this season.
