PRESQUE ISLE – Local officials with the Nordic Heritage Center are touting their group as the second-best organizing committee in North America after they received top scores from the United States Ski Association for hosting a major cross country skiing event.

The Nordic Heritage Center placed second out of nine organizing committees across the country that organized Super Tour events for the USSA. For the first time, USSA officials evaluated the events to show which venue hosted the highest quality Super Tour stop.

“This is great, absolutely great,” Ray Hews, chairman of the organizing committee for the Presque Isle-hosted Super Tour, said on Saturday. The event was held during the TAMC International Spring Series at the Nordic Heritage Center in March. The local organizing committee, composed of area volunteers, held three Super Tour events last month, crowning four national champions.

“You’re talking about competing with places like Telemark, Wisconsin, which is one of the top cross country ski places in the country,” Hews said. “I mean, Soldier Hollow [Utah] was behind us and they have a former Olympic venue there. For us to beat them was pretty cool.”

Presque Isle also beat out Madison, Wis.; Mt. Itasca, Minn.; Aspen, Colo.; Minneapolis; Fairbanks, Alaska; and West Yellowstone, Mont. Only Telemark, Wis., received higher marks than the northern Maine site.

Each venue was evaluated on several aspects of hosting a Super Tour event, including technical aspects, promotion of the event, media coverage, number of spectators, quality of team areas, and atmosphere at the venue. Sites could score a total of 1,000 points. Telemark received 816, Presque Isle received 747, and third-place Madison, Wis., received 728.

“We missed out on technical points because of snow conditions and we fell down on media coverage because only one television station covered us and we only had one news article and no black and white or color photos of the event,” Hews said.

The organizer said if the local organizing committee had been able to receive points in those two areas, they would have secured first place, but officials are trying not to dwell on that.

“We didn’t come in second, we’re the second-best organizing committee in North America,” he said.

Hews said the evaluation shows that Presque Isle has set the bar very high in terms of the level of organization local volunteers put into both cross country skiing and biathlon events.

It also adds to the Nordic Heritage Center’s reputation as a first-class facility – Hews said local organizers are facing a dilemma of whether they want to host a U.S. National Cross Country Ski Championship, the Super Tour Spring Series, or both next season.

“This honor means that we are very well respected in the USSA community for being an organizing committee that can host very high level events that athletes enjoy coming to,” Hews said. “And we’ll continue to host top quality events.”