NASTAR vs Beer League

[Tricia]

Because someone asked, (in another thread) and some may like to have a deeper understanding of the two different applications of racing.

My sense is that Beer Leagues is more localized to a mountain ( or perhaps a region) and is (mostly) night racing that is built on teams racing against each other.
NASTAR is an organization that has several mountains that have NASTAR courses where you can sign up and run the gates to get times, which rank you locally, regionally and internationally.

Because I'm not into racing, I may be wrong on this. Hopefully someone can chime in and give this some clarification.

 

[Dadskier]

I think that's mostly correct. Our Beer League uses NASTAR rankings and handicapping, etc. In addition to competing against individuals and teams at your mtn you also can check your rank against the rest of the region and nationally. If you rank high enough in your age/gender/medal group you get an invite to Nastar nationals.

The course is longer than the daytime course they put up for walk on race timing. I'm sure there are Beer League's out there that do not use NASTAR.

 

[Johnny V.]

I think that's mostly correct. Our Beer League uses NASTAR rankings and handicapping, etc. In addition to competing against individuals and teams at your mtn you also can check your rank against the rest of the region and nationally. If you rank high enough in your age/gender/medal group you get an invite to Nastar nationals.

That sums it up pretty well. Our league uses the NASTAR system also,although up until last year Bristol did not offer public NASTAR racing. Our course is also longer and more challenging than the typical NASTAR course. The year I went to the NASTAR Nationals, the competitors who had only skied the usual NASTAR courses complained that the sets were more difficult than they were used to-to me they were similar to our league courses.

Frankly, it's pretty easy to qualify for the Nationals-top 5 in age, gender and medal category at each hill get invited.