By Amelia Whitehead, Year 9
On Monday the 10th of May I travelled to Stoke to compete in the Nationals Schools Association Open Championship. I finished first U16 girl and was the fastest overall female on the day. This race was the result of months of hard training both on my skis and in the gym to enable me to take seconds off my time and compete against people that previously I had been seconds behind. The hard work paid off and I managed to bring my A game and some of the fastest skiing I have ever achieved.
The race was run in time slots due to COVID but no one let that dampen the mood or the atmosphere of the day. At the start of your race slot you collected your bib and got ready to go skiing. When your group was called you could go and have some warmup runs followed by course inspection where you go down the course slowly looking at which way you have to go. After the course inspection we did our three race runs. My first two runs were good but I managed to put down a really fast run on my third to seal the win.
I would encourage anyone interested in skiing and especially slalom to look to their local ski slope in Sunderland and RT ski club. There is also the opportunity to participate in entry level schools race teams via ESSKIA (the English School Ski Association). They run training days in Sunderland a few times a year, further information can be found at www.esskia.org. If you would like to talk to someone in school about these opportunities, please email Mrs Mole (emole@stmacademy.org.uk) or Mrs Plummer (eplummer@stmacademy.org.uk).
