Casper 2025 Feb 7

The Team Writes History Again! Sheridan Boys take 2nd in a full strength field.

Today’s race was special for many reasons. First of all, Casper is an awesome location to race at—even though they almost had to cancel the event due to melting conditions and a film of ice covering the trails. Thankfully, they received some snow last night.

Secondly, the two Casper races are being used by High Plains Nordic to determine who gets to go to Junior Nationals in March. While Kayley had already qualified through previous races, both SeanKyle and Gabe were still aiming to punch their tickets.

Finally, we have more talented and hardworking young men on the team than we have spots on the Varsity team for State. Therefore, we also use the Casper races to determine who earns a place. Sadly, the season is also nearing its end, which means each trip brings us closer to having to say goodbye to some of our athletes as their season concludes.

Kayley finished 1st overall in her Varsity race, with just one second to spare over the 2nd-place finisher from Pinedale. We trained her very hard this week and didn’t expect a podium spot—so that was a great surprise.

Gabe finished as the top Sheridan boy, placing 11th overall, which is excellent and, I believe, a PR for him. SeanKyle placed second for our team, and both he and Gabe proved they are worthy competitors, even though their finishing times missed the Junior Nationals qualifying standards by 2% and 5%, respectively.

The biggest surprise was our 3rd finisher from Sheridan: Kade. He’s only a freshman and had an exceptional day—we are very proud of him! Justin came in 4th on the team, which was equally impressive, considering we had loaded him with VO2 max intervals and heavy HIIT training over the previous two days.

A big congratulations to Clara—she finished 6th in the JV race and looked incredibly strong as she crossed the finish line. It was so fun watching her with a huge smile as she received her 6th-place ribbon.

Finally, a shout-out to Isabelle. The JV girls were finishing concurrently with the Varsity boys' race, and wow—she looked fast and strong, chasing down a couple of Varsity boys towards the finish!

Now to the "writing history" part: the boys finished 2nd (S E C O N D ! ! ! 🤩) overall in the team score. Even though we didn't have a single top-10 finisher, we proof to be one of the absolute deepest teams. Kelly Walsh won 51 points ahead of us, Sheridan was 2nd with 72 points ahead of Natrona by 1 point and Lander by 4 points. This is a huge victory for us as all the teams (accept maybe Jackson) competed with their entire A-team.

Race Results:

Varsity Boys (55 skiers, 7.75k Skate)

11th Gabe 24:17.4

15th SK      24:57.1

18th Kade      25:20.2

23rd Justin    26:03.9

26th Abe        26:12.1

27th Henry     26:12.3

35th Luke     27:26.6

43rd Andre     29:57.3

46th Carter     30:28.7

48th Eric          31:45.0

51st Max         33:14.3

53rd LoganZ   34:12.7

54th Will          36:36.9

Varsity Girls (61 skiers 7.75k Skate)

1st Kayley 25:58.8

32nd Brynn 32:31.4

37th Kindell 33:18.7

55th Ella 37:51.7

60th Mary 42:15.0

JV Boys (20 skiers, 5k Skate)

17th Logan M 23:14.6

19th Sean 25:18.5

20th Elijah 37:17.7

JV Girls (18 skiers, 5k Skate)

6th Clara 23:39.0

15th Isabelle 27:21.2