CALGARY - Elisabeth Vathje may have hit a triple in her first at-bat in skeletons big leagues, but the slider is hardly an overnight success. Nike Air Max Sale .Skeleton, and its sporting relative bobsled, commonly draw athletes later in their lives from track and field and other explosive sports.Vathje (pronounced VAT-chee) is unique in that she began sliding head first on a sled at 14.Now 20, the Calgarian won a silver medal in her World Cup debut last week in Lake Placid, N.Y. Her second stop on the World Cup circuit in on her home track Friday in Calgary.You go to your first World Cup, you expect the jitters, Vathje says. To finish second was incredible. I was overwhelmed.The one thing I do say is my goal is top six, but Im going in with no expectations. If I go in saying I want to win your brain is not focused on the correct thing.Youre missing the process and focusing on the outcome. Its important for me to just go out and slide. My body knows what it should do.The World Cup in Calgary opens with mens and womens skeleton and two-man bobsled Friday. Olympic gold medallist Kaillie Humphries will pilot her two-woman sled and make her World Cup debut as a four-man pilot Saturday.Vathje won a silver medal at the world junior skeleton championship Jan. 25 in Winterberg, Germany. Shes been racing the developmental North American Cup and Europa Cup circuits for several years. The week prior to her World Cup debut, she won a Europa Cup in Winterberg, which is the site of the 2015 world championships.Her ascension comes at a difficult time financially for Canadas skeleton team. The team has undergone a complete changing of the guard with no returning Olympians this winter.Own The Podium funding dropped to just $20,000 for 2014-15 from an average of $876,250 in the years between the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics.So Vathje, with help from sponsors and the bank of parents Rita and Jeff, is paying the majority of the freight. She says Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton will cover travel, accommodation and meals for races, but her coaching, equipment and support-team costs are borne by her.British skeleton sled maker Richard Bromley, the brother of racer Kristan Bromley, and former Canadian team slider Charles Wlodarczak are coaching Vathje.Bromley produced her new $10,000 sled that took her to another level in racing the moment she dove onto it in October.It was love at first slide, Vathje said. I went on that sled and it was a second faster than my old sled. Its incredible to have it tuned so perfectly to me that I can just let the sled do the work.An employee benefits company and a trucking company sponsor her. Her father works for an energy company. Vathje says her mother bakes and sells cookies to defray the cost of her racing.I will be going to different competitions on the back of cookies, Vathje says. Its really sponsors that are coming behind me. My mom and dad cover the rest basically. Working in the summer is hard because its not conducive to good training.We call it Team Vathje. It takes a village, really. It is expensive.She took up the sport because her father sat near the luge team on a plane from Vancouver when she was 13.They got talking and at the time I was too old for luge and too young for bobsled, but perfect for skeleton, she explained. We got involved. I did a talent I.D. camp.It was kind of crazy, but my parents signed off on it.The World Cup circuit moves to Europe in January. Vathje knows the North American tracks inside and out having slid on them often in the minors. But shes confident in her abilities in Germany, Austria and France because shes raced Europa Cups on those tracks too.OTP allocates Sport Canada funding based on whether a sport federation has athletes with medal potential. Vathje knows winning World Cup medals could help restore funding to the team.Thats not really something I focus on, but I want to do my best to help better my team, she said. Were in an individual sport, but were still a team. I want to see my teammates do well. The last thing I want to see if because we have a lack of funding that we do poorly.If I do well, fantastic. It helps the team. It betters the team and better us all. Wholesale Nike Air Max From China .J. -- Kyle Palmieri thrilled his personal rooting section with an overtime winner that sent the Anaheim Ducks to their seventh straight win. Cheap Air Max 270 . A groundswell for raising the number of playoff qualifiers to seven in each conference figures to get plenty of support from the 32 owners. Most notably, Arizonas Bill Bidwill, who saw his Cardinals go 10-6 and not get in, while Green Bay (8-7-1) qualified by winning the NFC North. https://www.wholesalenikeairmaxshoes.com/ . Miralem Pjanic dribbled through the defence to score an extraordinary goal in the 43rd minute at the Stadio Olimpico and Gervinho added another from a rebound in the 65th for Romas ninth straight victory — ending Milans five-match winning streak.Got a question on rule clarification, comments on rule enforcements or some memorable NHL stories? Kerry wants to answer your emails at cmonref@tsn.ca. Good morning Kerry, I love your daily clarifications to help everyone understand better why some calls are made! My question is in regards of spearing. As you know by now, Milan Lucic speared Alexei Emelin in Game 3 - again! I understand that at times some calls be overlooked, but why is he continuously getting away with it? If there is video evidence, why nothing is done afterward to avoid any precedence to be set? My last question: is this not making the officials in a difficult position? Thank you very much for your time. Lyne Laurendeau Lyne: The act of spearing and butt-ending seldom result in a player suspension. Instead, a fine may be imposed (but not always as we have seen) by the Player Safety Committee. It would appear that players are utilizing both ends of their hockey stick on a more consistent basis in violation of rule 58 (butt-ending) and rule 62 (spearing). This season the following fines have been levied for these illegal acts: February 6, 2014: Alexei Emelin - Montreal Canadiens - Butt-ending Pascal Pelletier ($5,000)March 20, 2014: David Legwand - Detroit Red Wings - Butt-ending Evgeni Malkin ($5,000)April 13, 2014: Scott Hartnell - Philadelphia Flyers - Spearing Brett Bellemore ($5,000)April 18, 2014: Milan Lucic - Boston Bruins -Spearing Danny DeKeyser ($5,000)April 25, 2014: Ryan Garbutt - Dallas Stars - Spearing Corey Perry ($1,474.36) You also might recall in the Ducks-Stars series on April 18th that Corey Perry was given a "slashing" minor when he "speared" Jamie Benn at 7:25 of the first period. Perry remained in the game as a result the "slashing" assessment and then scored an unassisted goal at 16:15 of the second in a 3-2 Anaheim win. Milan Lucic was also guilty of an undetected backdoor spear motion on Alexei Emelin in a game March 24. Neither of these incidents resulted in a fine. Beyond the non-call in the Bruins-Habs game the other night, no disciplinary action or fine will result from Lucics latest spear on Emelin. It should also be noted that Emelin was guilty of cross-checking on the play and was not penalized for the infraction as well. Fouls can be missed in the fast pace of the game. There is obvious reluctance on the part of the referees to call "spearing" foor what it is due to the severity of the penalty that they must impose under the rule. Fake Nike Air Max Replica. Only when contact is significant, as in the Ryan Garbutt spear on Corry Perry, will we see the accurate call made. Perrys action on Jamie Benn was no less a spearing motion than Garbutts, but due to lesser degree of contact (deemed to be minimal by the ref) the infraction was called slashing. It is not the referees job to interpret the relative value of the rule or base their assessment on the degree of contact (or non contact) when a spearing motion is delivered. That however is exactly what is being done. Under rule 62, the referee is empowered (and expected) to assess a double minor is imposed when a player spears an opponent and does not make contact. A major and game misconduct is to be assessed on a player who spears an opponent (makes contact). When I attended my first NHL training camp for officials as a 20-year-old aspiring referee in 1972 we went through every rule in the book during daily classroom sessions. The rule book wasnt all that thick back then and the referee had the option of assessing a minor or major penalty for spearing based on the degree of contact. Wanting to understand the difference between the two applications I approached veteran referee Lloyd Gilmour for advice. I asked Gilmour what constituted the difference between a minor or major penalty for spearing. Without so much as a wink, Lloyd said, "Kid, if you see the spear go in its two minutes; if the stick comes out the players back call it five!" Perhaps the veteran advice was a little tongue-in- cheek but in reality not all that far off from the application we might be seeing now. Lyne, it is my opinion that there should be a fine imposed for every instance of spearing and butt-ending; regardless of the degree of contact or whether a penalty was imposed by the referee. Both are dangerous and cheap acts. Further to this, the referees must be directed to call the action of spearing and butt-ending for what they are and not place their personal value on the degree of contact made with the point or end of a players stick. It is the referees that are putting themselves in a "difficult position" by either ignoring the infraction or calling it by any other terminology than what it is. Penalty enforcement and fines would result in higher standards of player accountability and act as a stronger deterrent against these unwanted acts from being committed. ' ' '