Hey BUST,

Katie Basse here, writing to you from deep (deeep) within the Colorado Mountains. I'm at Copper Mountain of course at the USASA Nationals Competition. Yesterday was a practice day. All the competitiors in every age group had about an hour to practice their event. The events are Boardercross, Slopestyle, Giant Slalam, Slalam, and Halfpipe.

Here's how the competition works: There are 6 groups of riders that contain different age groups and genders. Every day, a different group has one of the competitions with one day off (6 groups, 5 events, get it?).

I'm in Group 3 which has menehune girls (10-11), breaker girls (12-13), youth women (14-15), junior women (16-17), and women jams (18-22).  I was also in women jams. On the practice day, there was about a half a foot of fresh powder and it was snowing. Figuring out the timing of the jumps was a bit tricky and the boxes were a bit sticky. I got in 3 practice runs during our timeslot. The jumps were bigger than at the slopestyle comps at Okemo but I got used to it.

Today was the competition. There was a little bit of new snow but not too noticable. The trails and terrain parks were freshly groomed with packed powder. It was also sunny and not too cold. I got on the lift around 8:20am and just rocked it. Thankfully there was a mini park, a some big jumps, and a rail park on the way down to the slopestyle course so there was a lot of places to practice when you couldn't get on the course. The first heat had menehune girls, breaker girls, and youth women. The second heat had junior women and women jams. During our practice time from 12:40-1:10pm, I only got in one run but I got the feel of the jumps so I could dial in my speed. Then we started the runs. After the first run I was in 8th. But in the end I got 13th out of 20 competitors. Not too shabby for the BU Snowboard Team's first appearence at Nationals.