With the departure of the Eastern Combined skiers Demong, Hinkley and Van Loan to the "Blob" Team, this year's J-I Combined team was a little thin but Taylor Hoffman and Troy Hansen jumped into the fray along with Ryan Cutter and "Avo" Roberts to field two teams for the J-I Team Sprint and finished 5th and 6th in the JO's first event. In the J-II event Chris Decker and Geoff Howe teamed up for the East's first medal placing 2nd out of 11 teams. Morgan Goodwin and Jonathan Kling finished in 5th position while the All-Star Girls Team of Laura McLane and Molly Stone took 9th.

The Team Jumping event on the next day saw the East J-I Team of Troy Hansen, Ryan Cutter, Kyle Wylie ad Taylor Hoffman end up just out of the medals in 4th place. The unfortunate injury of Ryan McKeon impacted the East in this event but Hansen stepped up to fill the 4th man spot. Central Team #1 led by Tim Martin dominated the event even though RMD's Clint Jones was untouchable with jumps of 94 and 95 meters. Intermountain finished in the Bronze position with good performances by Newcomb and Hartman Rector. East #2 landed in 10th place with Josh Carter, Howe, Szotyori and Roberts as members.

Moving into the J-II Team Event, Intermountain racked up the Gold with Clint Jones again dominating the event leading RMD to a Silver with Central's Team #1 in the third spot. East #1 made up of the Carter Brothers, Decker and Howe had to settle for sixth and East #2 (Squires, Goodwin and Kling) finished in eighth. For the first time in years the East had no entries in the J-I Nordic Combined event which was won by IMD's Brian Miller. In the Women's event, however, the East had a good day as Molly Stone defended her title making up over six minutes to win a come-from-behind effort to pass Lindsay Van, who finished second, and Laura McLane, showing great strength in Cross Country to grab the bronze medal in front of Blair Tomten and Sonja Sungaard. Showing that the East has some good J-II Combined skiers on the way up, Geoffrey Howe grabbed the bronze medal in the J-II Combined event with Chris Decker in 7th, Morgan Goodwin, 10th and Jonathan Kling in 12th.

The next events were the J-II Special Jumping and the Women's Jump events on the K-65 meter hill. (As an aside, the hills at Suicide Bowl are all named in spin-offs from the notorious K-90 "Suicide Hill". The K-65 is known as "Homicide" and the K-30 meter hill is call "Pesticide".) So, on the "Homicide Hill" a field of 13 women battled it out for the Women's crown and 42 J-II's suited up to determine the J-II title. To no one's surprise Clint Jones out jumped the field to beat Ben Erlandsen and Logan Gerber in 2nd and 3rd respectively. The East did not have one of it's better days and although several skiers had the potential to crack the top ten, no one did. Josh Carter was the first Eastern finisher in 16th place, Jonathan Kling 24th, John Farnham 25th, Morgan Goodwin 29th, Chris Decker 30th, Geoff Howe 32nd, Jeremy Carter 33rd, Kevin Squires 36th, Brian Welch 39th, and Brian Farnham in 41st. I think that this shows the need we have in the East for a training hill in the 60 meter size, but, in fairness to our J-II's, most of these skiers had performed far better then on this day. All but one of these skiers have several years left as J-II's so things are not as far off as it might seem. In the Women's event things went somewhat better as Liz Szotyori took the gold in the J-I age class with Molly Stone in 2nd and Laura McLane in 3rd. Marie Pierre Morin was actually third but as a Canadian was the winner in the Guest Class. The overall Women's winner was Lindsey Van who won the J-II class and had the days highest scores. Veronica Myrha from Central was 2nd and Berit Tomten was third in the class. This was the biggest number of female jumpers since the JO's added the Women's division, thirteen in all, It looks like Women's Jumping is really taking hold - which is positive!

On the last day of the competition the action moved back to the "Suicide" K-90 meter hill. The Women's event saw Lindsey Van fly away from the field to win by 43 points with Liz Szotyori in 2nd, Molly Stone in 3rd and Marie Morin winning the Guest Class, but actually placing 3rd overall. In the Boy's event for the Junior Olympic K-90 Title, Herman Rector emerged from the pack with a monster 93 meter ride to win by 9 points over Time Martin and Clint Jones in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Newcomb and Gerber rounded out the top five with transplanted Central skier Kyle Wylie, now skiing for the East in 6th. Ryan Cutter skied to a 7th place finish with Taylor Hoffman in 8th to give the East a respectable showing. Geoffrey Howe placed 25th, Troy Hansen 30th, Matt Risch 35th, Chris Decker 39th, Josh Carter 40th, John Farnham 41st, Morgan Goodwin 42nd, Avery Roberts 43rd and Jonathan Kling in 44th. Mention should be made of Ryan Cutter who was skiing with what turned out to be pneumonia, and rose to the occasion to jump much better than he had been skiing in training.

In review, the 1998 JO's had some high moments for the East but the lack of early season skiing obviously was a factor. The sport goes in cycles and although there were some definite holes in our results this year, it is obvious that in the next year or so several of these skiers are going to be forces to be reckoned with. Next years JO's will be in Anchorage, AK and should see many of these skiers improving their performances significantly. For many of the Eastern squad, this was their first JO event and it was certainly a week of importance in everyone's development. Let's look ahead to 1999 and take pride that we came away with 9 medals, 7 won by Eastern Girls - Good Work by All!