The winter season for Vermont high school sports begins this weekend, but the Brattleboro Union High School nordic skiers will have to wait a bit longer for their first meet.
A freestyle event scheduled for Saturday morning at Grafton Ponds has already been cancelled. While Grafton Ponds has the ability to make snow, conditions have simply been too warm to do so.
Another freestyle meet at Prospect Mountain in Woodford, scheduled for Dec. 17, looks iffy as well. And until there's a big snowstorm and cold conditions to preserve it, Brattleboro's first scheduled home meet, on Dec. 27 at the Vermont Agriculture Business and Education Center, looks doubtful too.
Last winter was a good one for the Brattleboro nordic teams. The girls won the Division I state championship, while the boys finished fourth. Most of the members of those squads are back for this season, but they have been stuck doing a lot of dry-land training while waiting for the snow to arrive.
While the Old Farmers Almanac calls for a winter that will be colder than normal, with near-average amounts of snowfall, the National Weather Service says the chances are 50-50 that we'll see an average winter with average amounts of snowfall in New England.
The wild card, according to the weather service, is something called the Arctic Oscillation. When it is in a negative phase, it pushes cold air into the Northeast. When it is strongly negative, as it was in the past two winters, we get huge snowstorms.
Further muddying the snow forecast is the November we just had. It was one of the warmest Novembers on record in Vermont. It was also one of the sunniest Novembers on record, which is unusual for a month that is typically the cloudiest of the year in Vermont. Looking at past weather patterns, warm autumns are typically followed by warm winters.
This might be too much meteorological information for a sports column, but nordic skiing is totally dependent on weather. A snowless winter means no nordic skiing, and while mountain ski resorts can make snow if the weather is cold enough, it is more difficult for nordic ski areas like Grafton Ponds to turn on the snowguns until there is an extended cold snap.
The Brattleboro nordic teams are definitely thinking snow right now, and are getting antsy to start their season. Maybe the weather will cooperate.
Hockey starts Saturday
• Fortunately, ice hockey gets played indoors, so the Brattleboro squads will start their seasons on schedule on Saturday.
The Brattleboro boys will face St. Johnsbury at Withington Rink at 4:45 p.m., while the girls travel to Hartford for a 2 p.m. game at Barwood Arena.
The Colonel girls will play their first home game on Wednesday, Dec. 14, when they host Burr & Burton.
Varsity basketball set to begin
• Vermont's high school varsity basketball season also starts on Saturday, and the Twin Valley girls will be the first team in action with a 4:30 p.m. home game against Mount Everett. The Twin Valley boys will wait until Dec. 17 to play their first game, a 3 p.m. home matchup against Rivendell.
On Monday night, Brattleboro's teams open on the road, as the girls travel to Peterborough, N.H., to face Conant, while the boys are in Manchester to take on Burr & Burton.
The Leland & Gray boys open the season in Ludlow against Black River on Monday night, and then play in the Arlington Tip-Off Tournament starting on Dec. 14.
The Leland & Gray girls will also start the season on the road, with a trip to Clarendon to face Mill River on Friday, Dec. 16.
Bellows Falls gets going a bit later. The boys open at home on Dec. 16 against Black River, while the girls don't start until Dec. 22, when they travel to Sharon Academy.
Austine falls in Tip Off Tournament
The Austine School boys' basketball team played host to the annual Northeast Schools for the Deaf Tip Off Tournament over the weekend in Brattleboro, and lost its first game in the tourney to American School for the Deaf of West Hartford, Conn., 60-53, on Friday night.
On Saturday morning, Austine beat Rhode Island, 49-46, to advance to the third place game, which they won over Governor Baxter School of Falmouth, Maine, 65-25.
American faced The Learning Center of Framingham, Mass., in the championship game on Saturday afternoon, where The Learning Center rolled to a 51-35 win.
A third-place finish was an improvement on the last place showing last year, according to coach Ian Fournier.
Senior center Jake Gadreault led the Arrows in points, rebounds and blocked shots. Gadreault had 34, 32 and 27 points, respectively, in the three games.
Fournier said other standouts for the Arrows included David Surbaugh and Taijuan Minor, who scored 8 and 7 points, respectively, in the American game, and 12 and 11 points, respectively, in the Governor Baxter game. Junior guard Anthony Moodie scored 10 points against Governor Baxter, while seventh-grader Chaz Palmer scored 4 for his first points as a varsity player.
CRVBL organizational meeting on Dec. 13
• The next Connecticut River Valley Baseball League organizational meeting will be held Tuesday, Dec. 13, at 6:30 p.m. at MacLaomainn's Scottish Pub in Chester.
Discussions regarding new teams, rules changes, scheduling, and other items will continue. This is a board meeting, but is open to anyone interested in starting a new team and/or playing baseball next summer.