This post race report was sent in by Ashley Montgomery of UMF’s toboggan team Leave it to Beavers. Three teams from UMF competed Saturday in the 20th annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships. (The complete story is below.)
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CAMDEN – First.. Everyone is in one piece! There were no trips to the medic station from UMF folks.
The low snow fall combined with the cold temps, made for very, very, very icy tobogganing. There will be some bumps and bruises from the crazy skidding across the ice on Hosmer Pond after leaving the chute. If you were there, you might have witnessed Kristina Wolff in full flight over John Messier and Chad Duncan.
Our new toboggan and beaver mascot held up well. With a bit of Chris Lavery’s trusty pink duck tape we made a few adjustments (attaching the beaver to the front like a hood ornament & more firmly attaching the pad to the toboggan).
Best times:
9.11 seconds- #178- Galeazzi- Kristina Wolff, John Messier & Chad Duncan
9.01 seconds- #195- Leave it to Beavers- Kerry Kowalczyk, Ashley Montgomery & Chris Bennett
9.035 seconds- #335- Wicked Bad Beavers- Sarah Maline, Chris Lavery, Ariel Simpson & Chris O’Brien
Leave it to Beavers landed in 71st place in the 3 person. That is our highest ranking team ever!
Now, time for a nap and some ibuprofen & maybe a little planning for next year! – Ashley
Pictures from the race-
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265378&id=5818404&l=4e08f7e555
Pre-Race story: Oh Chute! UMF’s toboggan teams prepare to be thrilled
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FARMINGTON – Going 40 to 50 miles per hour on your back with nothing but a plank of wood between you and the cold, hard ice isn’t for everyone.
For the assorted professors, friends and staff from the University of Maine at Farmington who have bravely signed up to compete in the 20th annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships this weekend, well, the question of “if this is for me” may have come up a time or two this week.
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The championships held at Camden Snow Bowl feature a slick, ice-filled toboggan chute with a 70-foot high drop that measures 400 feet long, then spits the sleds out onto Hosmer Pond for a free-gliding ride to a hopefully gentle stop.
“It’s frightening,” Chris Lavery said of the idea that he, too, will be racing, as he loaded the 10-foot toboggan he built to be used by the three UMF teams competing.
For the third year, three UMF toboggan teams will be racing on Saturday in the annual championship that routinely draws a field of 400, two-, three- and four-person teams. The event is noteworthy in that it is the only organized wooden toboggan race in the country and, some say, the world. Whether that is true or not is debatable, but one thing is clear: it would be pretty sweet to bring home the hardware stamped with U.S. National Champion on it.
Based on the past two years of performance, UMF team members aren’t seriously thinking about taking home the big trophy but, instead, of having a seriously thrilling good time.
Riding at Number 178 is the “Galeazzi” team of: Kristina Wolff, assistant professor of sociology; John Messier, assistant professor of economics; Chad Duncan, assistant professor of Rehabilitation Services. “
Galeazzi” because past team competitor Dave Heroux, a UMF professor of chemistry and one of two instigators in getting teams from UMF to compete at the races, recently fractured his arm in the medically-described style of Galeazzi (in which one straight-arm’s the ground when falling and breaks both the radius and ulna bones of the forearm).
Number 195 is the crew who pay homage to UMF’s beloved mascot Chompers with “Leave it to Beavers,”
they are: Kerry Kowalczyk, admission counselor; Ashley Montgomery, director of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative and the other original toboggan racing instigator; Chris Bennett, assistant professor of Computer Science.
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At Number 335, the third team of four riders in another mascot-driven title of “Wicked Bad Beavers”
will be: Sarah Maline, associate professor of art history; Lavery, Ariel Simpson-Johnson; Chris O’Brien, assistant professor of history.
Lavery, is not only a UMF assistant professor of art and sculptor but, after this weekend, veteran toboggan racer, spent some 50 hours of work to complete the J-shaped sled he, along with the other UMF teams will be using to race down the toboggan shoot.
“I’d never built a sled before,” he said. Sleek and smooth, the white ash of Lavery’s toboggan gleamed brilliantly in the sun. A graceful curl of the wood forms a protective hood for the lead racer’s legs.
Included in the hours of work was the need to build a steam box for coaxing the wood to curl in just the right curve. It wasn’t easy. A lot of planks were snapped in the process that requires patience and an intimate understanding of the wood’s temperament, said Simpson-Johnson who helped build the sled and make a long cushion pad riders will thank her for a lot.
Montgomery, a racer on this year’s Leave it to Beavers team, with Heroux happened to be in Camden four years ago when the toboggan races were being held. Noticing teams from Bowdoin and Unity College, they wondered why not a UMF team.
Word was sent out and a few brave faculty members with a six-foot LL Bean toboggan took a few practice runs on Voter Hill in Farmington.
“Having science professors on the team was helpful,” Montgomery said. Matters of weight distribution, gravitational forces, the aerodynamics of it all in keeping everyone as low as possible and tucked in on the sled, are factors to be contended with when shooting down the mountain like a rocket in a narrow icy trough.
“It’s fun,” said the veteran racer Montgomery. This time, the racers will have the luxury of length with four more inches, thanks to Lavery’s new sled. That means tall people are welcome and everyone can lie down completely flat to hopefully go faster than the little over 9 seconds it took UMF’s teams last year.
Galeazzi crew member Wolff, who raced last year, said a key is the team members’ loading time and that will be practiced at the event. Another important tip at the finish is to not move until the sled slows down a whole lot. Her team started to get up too soon last year, which threw the sled into a spin and a major rollover.
“It’s really crazy,” Wolff opinioned.
