The Milford boys boardercross team is composed of many determined individuals competing to get down the mountain faster than their opponents. With a board strapped on your feet and a narrow course with four other snowboarders, this sport is very competitive. The Milford team has been one of the fastest teams racing at Alpine Valley since 2006, qualifying for States almost every year. For the 2021-2022 season, the Milford boardercross team is once again the team to watch out for.

This season is completely different from the past seasons. Last year, Milford finished second at States with a varsity team composed of mostly Sophomores and Juniors, and only a couple Seniors. With a varsity team that has only 10 spots, these spots are mandatory to fill with the best racers from the team. This year, racers previously on varsity still will remain on varsity, only losing former boardercross varsity racers Aiden Wilson and Henry Ginsbach. “This year will definitely be our best year yet,”  said varsity snowboarder Evan Wi lson. “Our varsity team will be almost all upperclassmen with a ton of experience, whereas previous years we had only a few upperclassmen.” The Junior and Senior led varsity team hopes to dominate the course at Alpine this year.

Milford is projected to be a top competitor at States this year, but how will they do it? As much as the sport is all about putting your fastest snowboarders in the varsity spots, it’s also about the training used to get the best advantage over the other teams to win. Milford has partnered with STS training this season to increase their chances of winning States. This can greatly help the team in winning this year due to the lack of any offseason training last year. If the athletes can transfer the learned skills and training to the hill, they can become even faster than they were before. “I think we finna take the dub at States,” said varsity snowboarder Jack Stander when asked about how the training is going to affect Milford snowboarders.

Another key component to winning is technique. Most boardercross teams will host their time trials event at Alpine, which places the fastest riders near the front of the lineup and the slowest riders near the bottom. Now as this technique has worked in the past, the Milford team has a different approach to setting up the varsity lineup. Last year, the team set every racer back one varsity spot, placing varsity one in varsity two, varsity two in varsity three, and etc. Varsity 10 then gets switched to varsity one. This technique will sacrifice the varsity one race, but help us win all the other nine races. This strategy will most likely be used this year to help Milford gain an advantage over the other teams. “It seems like an odd strategy, but when you think about it it makes so much sense,” said Senior Anabel Lisabeth. “It helped Milford win so many races last year and help us dominate in the varsity 2-6 spots.”

Overall, the Milford boardercross team has a lot of amazing components on their side which projects them to win states this year on Feb. 11. It will be interesting to see how the season plays out with the amount of upperclassmen, training and strategy Milford has so far. “It’s gonna be a great season this year,” said Stander.