Enfield
Whaleback’s Thursday Night Race League features more than 200 athletes on a total of 26 four-person teams, most of them made up of three men and one woman. They each vie for supremacy in one of five divisions — four based on the results of preseason time trials, one devoted to skiers from Tuck School of Business, whose students comprise eight teams — in an eight-week series of dual slalom meets.
With traditional skis, snowboards and telemark skiers all allowed, everyone gets two runs down a 15-gate, 200-vertical-foot course on Whaleback’s Lower Spout trail set up by volunteer administrators. Point standings are kept throughout the season and champions crowned for each division in March.
Yet no one is there exclusively for the competition. Even the series’ A-leaguers — some of them program devotees for two decades or longer — aren’t shy about what truly beckons their presence.
“You know the real point of us being here is up there (in the lodge), right?” said Thetford resident Doug Kennedy, whose A-league team, the Barrbarians, has been racing there together for 27 years. “I trust you’ve heard of a beer league?”
Indeed, the most fun part of the night may come at its conclusion, when all converge in the ski lodge for beverages (pre-paid dinner optional) and an array of prizes issued by league sponsors. Much of the schwag bestowed is for tongue-in-cheek reasons, given to he or she who manages the slowest run of the night, or for those involved in the biggest disparity between racing partners, the loser’s prize equal to the winner’s.
Before all the beer and cheer, all eyes are on the course, where starting-line volunteers Evan Dybvig — a two-time Olympian and former Whaleback co-owner — and Jim Mitchell organize proceedings, one calling participants to the line and the other ushering them off.
Trading off duties, the emcee announces from what’s known as the Ginny hut, built about 15 years ago to help warm longtime volunteer Guenther “Ginny” Frankenstein, of Lebanon.
“He was out here tirelessly since the ’80s, freezing his butt off,” said Mitchell. “Finally, we built this for him.”
Frankenstein, 87, worked the starting gate for 30 years before stepping down last winter for health reasons. He said all the frosty nights perched atop a section of the mountain known for its wind-tunnel effect were worth the effort.
“What better way to bring people together?” he said in a phone interview. “(The skiers and snowboarders) loved doing it, so I loved being there.”
Skiers and riders especially enjoyed last Thursday’s mild conditions, some taking extra runs on different trails — the league fee of $575 per team includes lift tickets for the whole mountain every Thursday night during the season, just be careful not to miss your turn on the course.
Others caught up with friends near a festive starting gate.
Some, such as Got Wood trio Jeremy Osgood, Mert Hastings and Rhys Dulac, have been teammates since their days together on the Lebanon High alpine team in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Norwich foursome Graham Webster, Jane LeMasurier, Luke McLaughry and Korry Vargo, of Inferno, first joined the league together in the late ’90s.
Others know each other from their places of employment, such as the teams named for West Lebanon’s Golf & Ski Warehouse and Omer & Bob’s in Lebanon. “They’re in the same league and go head-to-head sometimes,” Dybvig noted. “It’s a fun little rivalry.”
Some of the team names reference members’ equipment of choice (Locals on Volkls), contain a musical or literary reference (No Woman No Cry, Call Me Ishmael), or are slightly vulgar (Frosty Balls, Snot Rockets).
Other monikers are downright goofy, such as #RainbowUnicorn or Death Cookie Monsters, the latter a combination of the phrase used to describe a sudden icy patch on an otherwise powdery trail and the sweets-devouring Jim Hensen character from Sesame Street.
Hanover resident Marshall Wallach, who came up with the Death Cookie Monsters title, has been a Thursday Night Race League participant for several years.
“It’s an awesome way to break up the week, something to really look forward to,” Wallach said. “You get a lot of great memories here. I met my wife (Kathleen) at a bluegrass show, and we came here for our second date.”
The most creative team may be Tuckasaurus, whose members don pajama-style dinosaur costumes over their equipment every race night. The most boisterous could be Rat Chicken, members of which are sure to shout the team name in echo every time it’s announced on the public address system.
“Rat chicken! It’s just fun to say,” said Jenn Egner, of West Lebanon.
With each team requiring at least one woman, without which a time penalty is imposed, there are a handful of husband-and-wife tandems within teams. That includes Paul and Colleen Bozuwa, of Call Me Ishmael, who rate Thursday Night Race League among their favorite wintertime activities.
“In the middle of the winter around here, it’s a great way to get off the couch,” Paul Bozuwa said. “It allows you to make sure you go skiing every week.”
League co-founder Jeff Reed, a Whaleback co-owner when it installed lights and started the league in 1985, is proud to know it persists with such popularity.
“All the small local ski areas were doing it back then, because it’s a good way to get revenue,” Reed said in a phone interview. “But more important than that, and more important than the competition, is that it’s so much fun. It’s a place for people to meet.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.