Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza
Caribou Middle School sixth-graders visited the biathlon at the Nordic Heritage Center on Friday — shown here, from left, front row: Cullin Caverhill, Nathan Pitre, Haley Melanson and Danielle Cyr. Pictured in back right are, in the green hat, Spencer Soucy and in the green jacket, Jaxius Hartley.
By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Abbi Allen may have been pretty cold as she watched the biathletes compete in Presque Isle on Friday, but that was definitely a smile frozen on her face.
“I’m freezing — but I’m still having a good time,” said the bundled-up sixth grader as her peers warmed up in the spectator tent.
Allen and her Caribou Middle School classmates spent Friday morning cheering on the biathletes at the 2014 IBU Youth/Junior Biathlon World Championship with homemade noise-makers and encouraging shouts.
Approximatly 430 biathlets and coaches representing 30 countries have made the trip to Presque Isle for the competition, and Allen thinks that’s pretty significant.
“We’re in a small town in Maine, and you wouldn’t think we’d be holding something that the whole world — that people from like, Italy — would be coming to,” she said. “It’s pretty interesting.”
Though seemingly a temperature pun, there was plenty about the biathlon Allen’s classmates thought was pretty cool. Tristin Soucier, for instance, thought it was pretty cool how the biathletes could hit those tiny black targets, and Emma Hixon took inspiration from the “really cool” event.
“I love to ski and I hope I’ll be able to do this some day,” she said.
The middle-schoolers stayed for a bit over an hour, but Soucier could have stayed for longer — despite the cold.
“It’s sad that we have to leave, but it’s nice that we were here for that,” she said.
The three sixth-graders easily agreed on a few things — that the biathlon was pretty cool, that they were rooting for Team USA, and they all agreed if they could say one thing to the biathletes it would be “Good job!”
“And ‘nice to meet you,’” Soucier added.
Individual Competition events are slated to take place at the Nordic Heritage center today — though yesterday’s events were delayed an hour due to the winds and below-zero temperatures.
The Junior Women are expected to compete today at 10 a.m., with the Junior Men following at 1 p.m.
Admission is free for all Biathlon events.
Immediately before presstime, officials announced that the biathlon events will be delayed due to cold temperatures; the Junior Women, originally scheduled for 10 a.m. will start at 11 a.m. The Junior Men Individual competition, originally scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. will now start at 1:45 p.m.
