Youth racers dish on strategy for Junior Noque

MARQUETTE — The Noquemanon Ski Marathon weekend kicked off Friday afternoon with the Junior Noque.

ABC 10 caught up with a couple of the racers to see how ready they were for the event.

Teens, tweens and younger have come from near and far and have been preparing for the race for some time. Each racer had their own strategy for competing, whether it was technique–related or simple home field advantage.

“I’m going to go out hard and try to keep the pace,” said Nick Amato, 18, of Traverse City. “It’s a fast race today. With it being so short, though, I’m not going to try to play it conservative, just go out and do the best I can do.”

“It’s a short race and I just plan on going out hard, staying at the front and trying to win the sprint to the finish,” said Andrew Dyke, 17, also of Traverse City.

“Since we get to train on these trails, this is where we come five days a week normally, or Blueberry, we have an advantage because the other teams, they’re from Lower Michigan or Houghton, and they don’t get to train on these trails like we do,” said Marquette native Ingrid Lindquist, 17.

Bethany Wright, 16, also from Marquette, said, “It’s a huge hill, and then the second half of the course is all downhill, so I’m just going to push it up the first and then hope I can make it.”

While their methods may have differed all shared one trait in common: their excitement for the race. Races were tiered by age, such as 18 and 19–year–olds, and began at 4 p.m.

A number of Friday’s racers are also racing in Saturday’s Noquemanon Ski Marathon.