News & Stories

Junior Loppet Fall Program Recap

One word that might best sum up fall 2016 for the Loppet Foundation’s Junior Loppet teams may be ‘growing’. This fall we had more female students participating in our middle school programs than ever before and we also added two new female coaches, Coach Annie Rogosheske and Head Coach Mollie Gillberg. Girls officially outnumber boys in nearly every practice.

In the words of Anwatin Junior Loppet Head Coach, Allie Rykken, “Having this many girls in our programs is something that’s never happened before.”

In addition to a growing number of girls, we’ve also seen growth overall in all of our programs. Under the leadership of Head Coach Mollie Gillberg and Coach Dave Mott, the Northeast Junior Loppet program, has seen an especially large growth and is now 15 athletes strong.

With the growing number of new members, come some sad goodbyes. The 8th graders from last year have graduated and are adjusting to the high school skiing scene. The Franklin Junior Loppet team said ‘goodbye’ to Coach Jon Miller, after five memorable years of exceptional leadership. Taking over for Miller is Head Coach Sandra Peterson and Coach Annie Rogosheske. The new duo will continue to inspire the Northside to take the plunge into the world of outdoor adventure.

And, as always this year was busy, busy, busy! Youth in our programs participated in lots of fun fall races and events: the TRAIL KIDS Fall Adventure Running Series, the Trail Loppet, the Loppet Apple Run, the Loppet Games, Age Gap Relays. All of those events are in addition to practices where they mountain biked, rollerskied, and ran!

Now that the weather is finally starting to cool, our teams are looking ahead to ski season and another year of excitement, fun and adventure in the outdoors.