Maria Stuber at Yellowstone last season... © Ian Harvey/Toko

June 10, 2011 (Craftsbury Common, VT) – The Craftsbury Outdoor Center is pleased to announce new additions to both the roster and the programming of the Green Racing Project for 2011. We are excited to welcome Clare Egan, Maria Stuber and Bryan Cook to our program. Clare will join us as a full-time GRP skier; Maria and Bryan will be the first skiers to join us as Green Racing Project “training partners”.

Our goal in developing the training partners plan is to allow the creation of more flexible arrangements, which may better meet certain athletes’ needs while still achieving the goals of the Green Racing Project.

Clare Egan, a native of Cape Elizabeth, Maine and a member of the ’06 and ’07 NENSA Junior Olympic Teams, graduated in 2010 from Wellesley College where she started a cross-country ski program. She then raced the carnival circuit this past winter for UNH, where she was enrolled in a graduate program in linguistics. She qualified for NCAA’s with a 6th in the EISA Rankings. She was a three-season athlete for UNH, competing in both Cross-Country and Track as well as Nordic Skiing.

Maria Stuber of Waukesha WI raced collegiately for Northern Michigan University. For the past several years, she has been part of the CXC program. Maria’s results include several SuperTour wins as well as a couple of top 10 finishes at Nationals (2nd place in team sprint –Fairbanks 2009 and 8th place in 30K Skate–Fort Kent 2010). She’s also had some strong Birkie finishes: 4th in 2010, and 5th in 2011. As of this spring, she has moved to Bennington, VT to take the job of head coach of both the men’s and women’s cross country teams at Southern Vermont College.

Bryan Cook hails from Rhinelander, Wisconsin. He also competed for the Northern Michigan Wildcats in college before joining the CXC elite team. During his time at CXC, he podiumed in both the 30k classic and 50k skate at 2010 US Nationals, earning him a World Cup start in Canmore where he skied to 41st in the 15k freestyle. Bryan also now lives in Bennington, VT.

The goal of the Green Racing Project is to provide an environment where post-collegiate skiers can focus on a high level of training while also work on a broad range of projects supporting the mission of the Outdoor Center. These projects include coaching juniors, forestry projects, building and maintaining bike and ski trails, local food, communications work-and a variety of other projects related to the mission of the Center.

To our new GRP members – welcome aboard! We look forward to working toward all our goals together. As always, the hardest part of the selection process was saying no to many interested and qualified skiers. We wish all of our applicants the best of luck with your training and racing development and encourage you to apply again in 2012 if you have interest and a continued need for support.

For more info visit www.craftsbury.com