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Juneau soccer players Jenna Rutecki, Margaret Sekona and Kayla Walton are heading to Las Vegas this weekend to compete with a team of Alaska players at the 2005 Region IV Olympic Development Program Championship.

Rutecki, Sekona and Walton are freshmen at Juneau-Douglas High School, and they play for the Juneau Soccer Club Xtratuffs. They were selected to join the Alaska 1990 girls ODP team by the Alaska Youth Soccer Association.

The team - the first Alaska girls squad to compete at the tournament - will play Nevada on Friday, and will face Oregon and California South on Saturday. After round-robin play concludes, the top four teams from the field of 10 will advance to elimination-round play on Sunday.

ODP is a national identification and development program for high-level soccer players. It starts at the state level - Rutecki, Sekona and Walton trained with other Alaska players last year - before advancing to the regional level and beyond. For more information about the tournament and about ODP, look on the Web at www.regioniv.com

An all-night rain left the super-giant slalom course too soft to run Wednesday's Disabled World Cup event in Kimberley, British Columbia.

It was the second straight day that weather played havoc with races at Kimberley, where Juneau's Joe Tompkins is competing as a mono-skier. On Tuesday, a super-G race was called off midway through the competition due to poor visibility.

A super-G race is scheduled for today. Officials said that downhill races originally scheduled for today and Friday may be canceled, but a final decision will be made after today's race.