Five of the Visa Women's Ski Jumping Team are scheduled to compete at Harris Hill on Saturday and Sunday. The jumpers include: Tara Geraghty-Moats, age 16 from West Fairlee, Vt.; Danielle Lussi, age 17 from Lake Placid, N.Y.; Nina Lussi, age 15, from Lake Placid, N.Y.; Karin Friberg, age 20 from Roseville, Minn.; and Nita Englund, age 15 from Florence, Wisc.
According to Victor Method, Women's Ski Jumping USA, "The sport of women's ski jumping is growing and the Harris Hill Competition will be a great opportunity to appreciate the dedication and skill of these young athletes."
As a group they love to get on a pair of skis, head downhill at more than 50 miles per hour and then launch themselves into the air and fly more than the length of a football field. Spectators who come to the Harris Hill competition will get a rare chance to see them up close as they compete on a brand new re-built 90-meter jump.
"Ski jumping is the only Winter Olympics event that excludes women," says Karla Keck, director of the Visa Women's Ski Jumping Team, and a former ski jumper who saw her own Olympic aspirations crushed by international sports officials. Keck will not be on site for the Harris Hill competition, but her goal is to get women's ski jumping in the Olympics in 2010.
"A few years ago when I volunteered to mark distances at the annual tournament in Brattleboro it was great to see that at least one competitor was a young woman," reminisces former jumper Wendy Randall of Brattleboro. "Although their numbers are small, I know there are women jumpers in the U.S. who would welcome the chance to compete at the Olympic level. I think their time has come.
"I remember several folks, including my parents, recalling a woman named Dottie Graves, from Greenfield, Mass. She, I believe competed on the big hills--Greenfield had one then, as well as Harris Hill, in the 40's," Randall continues. "There was a teenager from Lake Placid named Sandy Vitvitsky who jumped when I did, and for a short while in Brattleboro there were three of us--Sandy Harris and Karen Middleton being the other two.
"It is tremendous what the committee and the townspeople have accomplished in restoring Harris Hill to its new life. It is a unique sport, and an especially unique sports venue for this corner of Vermont."
