Duluth coach John Gould has this report from Senior Nationals:
Minnesota Biathlon Athletes: Adelaide Bielke, Kellen Groth, Pat Lammersen, Eliza O’Cooper and Jonathan Rova participated in the Biathlon Senior Nationals at the Crosscut Nordic Center in Bozeman/Montana.
Coaches were John Gould of Duluth Biathlon and Holly Hanson of Bluff Country Biathlon. Julia Bielke, Kristin O’Cooper and Pat Lammersen Sr. served as range assistants.
The athletes participated in two days of training on Tuesday (March 25) and Wednesday (March 26) and three days of racing from Thursday, March 27 through Saturday, March 29. The race formats comprised a sprint race on the first day, a mass start race on the second day and a super sprint race on the third day. U15 athletes skied respectively 4.5, 7.5 and 4.5 km distances. U17 athletes skied respectively 6.0, 10 and 5 km distances. IBU Para Standing athletes skied a 7.5 sprint distance and were integrated into appropriate IBU age category distances for the mass start and super sprint competitions. Masters skied a 7.5 km sprint distance.
MN biathletes had to acclimatize themselves to the altitude in the mountains and deal with wet and sloppy snow. They all did very well to have completed two full days of training and 3 full days of racing.
Kellen Groth raced in the U17 division. Pat Lammersen and Eliza O’Cooper in the U15 division and Adelaide Bielke in the Standing Women Para Biathlon division. Our Master Biathlete Jonathan Rova participated only in the sprint race on the first day of competition.
Kellen won the male U17 mass start competition in a time of 34:16 and 0-1-2-4 shooting bouts. Pat Lammersen had his best day in the super sprint format finishing in a time of 34:41 with shooting bouts of 5-3-2-0. Eliza completed her Super Sprint in a time of 31:48 with shooting bouts of 0-1-0-1. Adelaide Bielke was integrated into the Youth Women Division in the Mass Start Race and finished the 10 km distance in a time of 34:00 with shooting bouts of 1-0-0-0.
Everyone enjoyed making new friendships and skiing along side of our national team athletes. As St. Scholastica students, Kelsey Dickinson and Paul Schommer both started their biathlon journey at Snowflake in Duluth. Kelsey won the Senior Women’s Mass start and Paul was second in the Senior Men’s Mass Start. Minnesotans Emma Stertz, Sam Stertz, Anna French, Jake Brown and Amanda Kautzer were all in the Senior IBU field and had solid performances.
