Heading into next week's season-opening race at Alpine Meadows, the Douglas High ski team is well ahead of where it was at this point in recent seasons.
On one hand, they have 35 skiers on this year's roster, including enough girls to fill a varsity lineup -- a luxury the Tigers didn't have last year.
On the other, thanks to the big snowstorm earlier this week, they'll come into the season with at least one practice on real snow.
"I wish it was wet snow instead of dry snow, but we'll never complain about having snow this early in the season," Douglas coach Christina Brown said. "Next week is our first race, and we won't get to gate train at all just yet, but at least they'll be able to get on skis before next week.
"That will be good. We're really happy with the turnout. Having enough girls to fill varsity is fantastic."
The Tigers come into the year with a handful of varsity returners, including 2009-09 state qualifiers Grant Denny and Hillary Sapp.
Brown said the team is waiting to see the status of senior Crystal Rutledge, who qualified for state as a sophomore, but missed her junior year with an ACL injury.
"We have her back but she is still recovering," Brown said. "We have to see what she has once she gets on the mountain. She's a great skier and it would be great to have her this year."
Other varsity returners include Nolan Lackey, Tanner DeGiovanni, Gavin Fitzhugh and Rachel Babbitt. Brown said there is always at least a handful of skiers that step up to surprise the coaching staff every year.
"They have great spirit as a group," Brown said. "They'll be a fun group to be around. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we had some standouts pop up outside of what we are already expecting.
"Every year we get kids with some good racing experience and we also get relative newcomers to racing. It's a good mix.
"The hard thing is setting team goals, because until we get out on the mountain a couple times, we really don't know what to expect."
That isn't helped at all by the league alignments in the Northern 4A. Douglas is grouped into the Tahoe Basin League as the only non-lake school while the remainder of the region (Carson, Reno, Galena, etc.) is in the Sierra League.
"We're really in a tough position to qualify as a team, because we're up against all the lake schools, who are on the mountain a lot more than we are," Brown said. "You get a lot of kids who do skiing with competitive resort teams throughout the year.
"We match up better with schools like Carson or Reno. But the upside is that when we go to our league races, they are harder than state competition. So we get to race against the best in the state every week and that pushes us to be better."
Douglas also enlisted the help of Mark Lilly to coach the boys' team and run fitness training this year.
"We've always had a good dry land routine, but Mark has coached a number of other sports (wrestling and football most recently) and he has a lot of new ideas to help us out," Brown said.
For next week's race, Brown said she'll have to construct a lineup based primarily off of last year's results.
"Everyone will get a chance out there, but some will be on varsity and some will be on JV to start," she said.
The team will get several weeks off from competition after the opening race and then get back to it on Jan. 6.
"We have Christmas break and then we get right into the thick of the schedule," Brown said.
The team is doing its mountain training at Heavenly this year and will have its "home" race at Heavenly on Feb. 4.
