Jump

This weekend is the107th annual Norge Ski Jump in Fox River Grove, a town about 10 minutes up the road.  If you don't know what the ski jump is, try to remember back to the opening part of Wide World of Sports where they showed the one guy on a ski jump crashing down to earth and plowing through anything in his way.  It's quite a sight seeing these guys and gals going down this huge "chute" and then purposely lifting themselves up into the air to try and get the most distance before they land.  And trust me, the "chute" they go down is much higher than what it looks like on TV.  The weekend is broken up into two events.  Saturday was the Junior division.  The kids and I got our "be outside all afternoon in the winter" clothes on and we went to check it out.  We had went before and had a really good time. But the last time we went was on Sunday when its the big boys.  The guys that are using this event to perform their qualifying trials for the Olympics.  So, we were a little disappointed because with the Juniors they aren't going off the big one.  They have several divisions in the Juniors with different size hills.  Would you believe there were kids as young as 4 years old going down a much smaller jump, but a jump none the less.  The best part about the young ones is you could see how much they have trained already and how focused they are for the jump.  But, coming to a stop without running into the crowd, not so much.  The look of pride on their faces, though, once they made their jumps was priceless. Hmmm, I just realized.  Most of the youngest ones were girls.  Don't know what that means, but......Maybe its the fact that for the first time, there will be a female event for ski jumping for women in the Olympics. Never before were they allowed.  And, the favorite to bring home a medal for the USA is a gal from the club that puts on this event.  The USA has never medaled in ski jumping before.  So there's a lot of hope for the future. Here's a few shots from Saturday.