It was no exaggeration when meet organizer Andrew Love predicted the 1st Masters International Open American Sprint would be a complete blast.
Meet organizer, Andrew Love, welcomes competitor, Mark Nolan.Thirty-one competitors from Seattle to Maryland and including four Canadians plus Romanian ex-patriate, Tavi Moga, sprinted their hearts out in Milwaukee's Pettit National Ice Centre (PNIC) on January 5 to 6, 2008. While no IMSSC records appeared to fall, the meet announcer was repeatedly heard to announce another "PNIC Personal Best" as skater after skater crossed the finish line while improving their own performance.
This theme carried through to the final awards where the 4 skaters with the largest personal improvements got to duel one last time in a contest of "pick a number between 1 and 4" with the lucky winner treated to a 90-day pass to a local fitness centre. Top competitors in all 5-year age classes were awarded beautiful PNIC sweatshirts and T-shirts and all skaters received a certificate featuring actual event photos and recording their individual race times and samalog points.
The event included a Saturday evening party at the home of meet registrar and competitior Olusegun Sijuwade (known to all as Olu) where copious food and drink was consumed while socializing and watching speed skating videos. The visual presentation included actual video of Saturday's races played backwards, forwards, in slow-motion and fast-forward with fun impromptu commentary contributed by all.
The meet was extremely well-organized and smoothly run due in large part to the dedicated team of PNIC volunteers who give up their weekend mornings throughout the skating season for open time trials. Only some of the crew are pictured here with numerous others including timers, starters, recorders, clerks and announcer helping this event to be a great experience for all skaters.
Many thanks to the meet organizers including Andrew, Olu, Carla Langenthal and others who also competed as well as contributed to the success of this first-ever international sprint meet in North America. See Results.
left-right: Olu (USA), Julie Houle (CAN), Andrew (USA) and Brett Arnason (CAN) 
2 comments:
Thanks much to all who came to skate, and to Ross for the publicity. Hope to see you all again Feb. 16-17 for the Masters International Open. And come anytime for training.
Jim White
Ross,you ROCK!!! Congrats on your PB's!!!!
Next year will be bigger. perhaps some other Canadian record holders would like to like to try their luck at the PNIC? The more the merrier!
peace!
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