And We're Back! XC Ottawa Team 2012
By:  Megan McTavish   (2011/05/23)

A new season of training has begun, and we are now starting on week 4 of the year’s training plan.  Today is our first official team practice, so we thought it was also time to update all of you on the team for this coming season.

Click HERE for some fun new team bios!

Basically, it looks very similar to last year.  Two of last year's crew are moving on to other things, and we have picked up two new teammates.  

First we would like to say good bye to Colin and Matthias. Colin is heading out to Whistler to be a member of the Callaghan Valley Training Center, one of Canada’s National Development Centers.  We congratulate him for his nomination to the CVTC and we wish him lots of luck there. We will surely see lots of him on the ski trails next winter.  We will also hopefully hear a bit about his adventures on this website as he has promised to keep us updated with some articles.

As for Matthias, he is currently undecided about his plans for next year.  We wish him all the best with his decision making and, if somehow he decides to stay in Ottawa to ski, we would sure like to have him back!

Both Colin and Matthias have been great teammates and were crucial to the team’s success for the past 3 years.

As sad as it is to see them go, we will luckily be replacing these two hard working guys with two great new recruits; Nansen Murray and Kyla Vanderzwet.

Nansen Murray comes to us from Whitehorse, joining his other Whitehorse/Ottawa teammates Logan and Lee.  Nansen skied with Carleton last season and has decided to step things up a bit this year.  We are happy that he has and look forward to helping him accomplish his skiing goals.

Kyla Vanderzwet comes to us from Guelph, and if she has anywhere near the work ethic as our last Guelph recruit Vesta, we are extremely lucky to have her!  Kyla is also not a completely new face to us. She did two work terms in Ottawa and we were lucky to do a bit of training with her then.  We look forward to having her join us as well.

As I mentioned, the rest of the team is the same as last year and the full team roster is listed below.

Check out our updated BIOS to read more about each team member.

MEN

• Karl Saidla (2001- )
• Kyle Power (2010- )
• Lee Hawkings (2010- )
• Peter Beisel (2011- )
• Logan Potter (2011- )
• Andre Marchand (2011- )
• Nansen Murray (2012- )

WOMEN

• Megan McTavish (2001- )
• Sheila Kealey (2004- )
• Danielle McVicar (2008- )
• Anna Geiger-Whitlock (2008- )
• Ingrid Hagberg (2011- )
• Vesta Mather (2011- )
• Katie McMahon (2011- )
• Kyla Vanderzwet (2012- )