Acquisition Season Roundup

We probably haven’t heard the last of athletes joining new teams for the 2013-2014 season, but already there have been a number of notable acquisitions at the elite club level. The Stratton Mountain School T2 team gained Simi Hamilton from Sun Valley, Annie Pokorny from Middlebury, and Ben Saxton as a post-graduate from F.A.S.T. Performance Training. SVSEF, in turn, will soon bring on Miles Havlick from the University of Utah to join Matt Gelso and Mikey Sinnott.

More new developments:

• The Craftsbury Green Racing Project, home to Ida Sargent and Susan Dunklee, announced a few additions and departures for next year. Liz Guiney (University of New Hampshire), Andrew Dougherty (Denver University) and Peter Hegman (University of Vermont) have signed on as new or soon-to-be college graduates, Clare Egan has shifted her focus to biathlon, while Tim Reynolds and Dylan McGuffin were not on the roster.
• In addition to Havlick, the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation elite team will include new members in Rose Kemp (University of Utah) and Mary Rose (University of Colorado), according to an email from head coach Colin Rodgers.
• The Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club, the most dominant domestic squad many years running, has three new men in its training group. Head coach Erik Flora reported that Tyler Kornfield (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) and Lex Treinan (UAF) will join Erik Bjornsen, Reese Hanneman next season. The women’s roster remained relatively constant; Kikkan Randall, Sadie Bjornsen, Holly Brooks and Rosie Brennan again headline the team. Brent Knight and Mark Iverson, Flora said, are retiring from the group.
• Sam Tarling (Dartmouth), who announced this spring his plans to continue skiing after graduation, is presently finalizing his team plans. He wrote in an email that he hopes to know who he’ll be skiing for by next week.

New teams mean different things depending on the caliber of athlete. Hamilton’s move to Vermont was mainly for training purposes, as he spends most of the race season in Europe with the U.S. Ski Team, but others will have more of an impact on the domestic circuit. So far, it looks like the SuperTour can expect a sizable incoming class next season.