Our regular season is quickly coming to a close. This past weekend we were at the Williams Carnival, where our guys continued to move up the standings and our women put down some more historic finishes.

Alpine Report by Coach Mitchell

The Harvard Alpine Team competed in the last regular-season carnival of the year this past weekend, the Williams College Winter Carnival, hosted at Jiminy Peak. Conditions for Friday’s GS race were windy to say the least, with coaches needing to hold their athletes from getting blown out of the start gate. Nonetheless, our skiers skied agressively and had some good results to show for it. The women’s team matched its best-ever 6th place finish from the UVM Carnival with another 6th place on the strength of an outstanding race by Caroline McHugh in 18th place, supported by Catherine Sheils in 28th and Tess Wood in 38th. The women had another solid finish in Saturday’s SL, with the team in 8th place on the strength of another consistent SL performance by Catherine Sheils in 21st, with Tenley Malquist in 32nd, Caroline McHugh in 37th, and Tess Wood 43rd.

The men moved up a spot this week to finish 9th in the standings in both SL and GS. The team was anchored, as always, by solid skiing from Chris Kinner, 29th in GS and 27th in SL. The rest of the men pitched in with Andrew Spielvogel recording a 41st and 30th in GS and SL respectively, Sam Harrison with a 37th in SL, and Brad Alvarez and Alec Boardman going 46-47 in the GS. Up next, NCAA Eastern Regional Championships at Middlebury this Friday-Saturday. One more race to show our stuff, wish us luck!

Nordic Report by Coach City

The women have now beaten every team in the league except for Dartmouth at least once.

Chris and Sara prep skis for Saturday's skate race

Senior Audrey Mangan had a career weekend with two top-20 finishes at Williams. On Friday, she led the team with a 13th-place finish in the 5km Classic. Esther Kennedy (17th), Alena Tofte (22nd), and Cara Sprague (29th) also finished in the top 30, giving us our third 5th place women’s finish of the year. In the 5km Skate on Saturday, Audrey finished 17th, followed by Esther (27th) and Alena (28th). Anika Petach (47th in the classic) and Clare Miller (45th in the skate) also had solid races this weekend.

In the 10km skate, senior Trevor Petach matched his season best placing of 37th–and was just 30 seconds out of the top 25. Kevin Sprague showed signs of returning to his early season form, tagging onto 7th place finisher Sam Tarling near the end of his second lap and skating to a 43rd place finish. Both Kevin and Trevor finished in the 40s in the classic race. Tor O’Brien had career bests both days, finishing 54th and 56th, and might well have cracked the top 50 except for a collision with an overtaking skier. Races both days were held under overcast skies, but in otherwise surprisingly good conditions. Cover was thin in Bennington, but Prospect Mountain had a couple of feet and seemed to be the sole exception to the recent drought of snow in New England. Fortunately, Middlebury and much of the rest of northern New England picked up a deep snowfall last night.

I’m very pleased to report that two of our skiers have been named to regional teams for the 2010 USSA Cross-Country Junior Olympics in Presque Isle, Maine. Kevin was named to the Mid-Atlantic team based on his performances in EISA racing this year. Tony Ryerson was named second-alternate for the New England team following his outstanding skiing in qualifying races this weekend in Gunstock and Holderness, New Hampshire.

Last weekend the team was in action at the UVM Carnival in Stowe, Vermont, where both alpine and nordic women posted historic finishes!

The Men’s Alpine squad continued to ski extremely fast, but suffer untimely mistakes that thwarted some otherwise good skiing.  Chris Kinner had the most consistent weekend, finishing 36th in GS and 31st in slalom.  Kevin McNamara chipped in a 38th in GS, with Andrew Spielvogel notching the men’s best finish of the weekend with 29th in slalom.  Sam Harrison showed his continually improving form with 33rd in slalom and Brad Alvarez followed that up with a 38th in slalom.

Catherine on the Eastern Cup podium

A number of our skiers also competed in a FIS Eastern Cup slalom race on Sunday, with almost the entire collegiate field in attendance, as well as a few Olympians you’ll see racing for the US in Vancouver in a few weeks.  So needless to say, the fields were very strong.  Kevin McNamara overcame a start spot of 66 and deteriorating course conditions to rally to an impressive 22nd place finish, some of the best skiing we’ve seen from him to date.  The women had a tremendously successful day as well, with Tenley Malmquist making a big move up to finish 17th, and Catherine Sheils linking two nearly flawless runs for 3rd place and a podium finish!  In the process, these three Harvard skiers beat a good chunk of the regular collegiate field, so this should prove a valuable confidence booster heading into the upcoming Dartmouth Carnival.  The teams are headed in the right direction, and we couldn’t be more excited!!!

Nordic Report by Coach City

Last weekend saw perfect race-time temperatures in the 20s and fresh powder that fell in the days leading up to the carnival.  The highlight of our weekend was the women’s 5km Classic on Saturday when we put three skiers into the top 25 (Alena Tofte – 18, Audrey Mangan – 20, Esther Kennedy – 24). I’m certain we’ve never placed 3 women in the top 25 before, but would love to hear from any alums who can tell me otherwise!  To give you a sense of how tough EISA is, it was only good for a team finish of 7th on the day (although just one spot behind Middlebury and a few points out of 5th).  The 5km classic was a breakout race for Alena, a freshman whose previous classic best was a 36th.  Cara Sprague and Anika Petach were not far behind our scorers in 34th and 41st, respectively. In Sunday’s 10km skate, Esther significantly improved on her previous skate finishes this year to lead the team with a 25th place finish.  Alena was close behind her in 33rd, and Clare Miller scored for the first time for us with a 46th place finish.  Audrey missed Sunday’s race due to illness.

Things are also looking promising on the men’s side. Freshman Tony Ryerson jumped into 41st in his second 10km classic race of the season (from a previous best 62nd). Trevor Petach led the men in Sunday’s 10km skate with a solid 43rd, a minute out of 27th.  The guys looked much sharper after the rest week.  Indeed, most of the team improved their previous placings in one technique or the other, which suggests that we’re rounding into peak fitness.  Where we didn’t improve our placings, it was because we weren’t aggressive enough in passing slower skiers at the first opportunity.  In an individual start race, like both events at UVM, one has to ski one’s best pace the whole time.  By drafting or cruising for a few seconds behind a slower skier when you don’t need to, you can lose several places in a short race very quickly.

Esther

Team with the Laval (Quebec) coach - who jumped into the photo.

The teams ended their January break by racing in the St. Michael’s Carnival in Vermont. The Alpine events were held at Smuggler’s Notch, while the Nordic events were at Sleepy Hollow Inn in Huntington.

Alpine Report by Tim Mitchell

The weather and snow conditions were ideal both days and the team is skiing better every race.  The men’s team is still finding its feet in terms of consistency; there is plenty of fast skiing, but we’re just not finding the finish line cleanly right now… Despite a few bobbles here and there, there were some encouraging results.  Chris Kinner led the way in GS with a 35th, followed closely bay Sam Harrison in 40th and Andre Spielvogel in 41st.  Alec Boardman put two solid runs together for a 35th place in slalom, a career best result, followed by Sam Harrison in 38th.  On the women’s side, the alpine squad was led by Catherine Sheils, who finsihed with two strong results, 17th in slalom and 21st in GS.  The women’s performance was supported by a 27th in GS from Meghan Luck and a 31st in slalom by Margie Thorp.  Things are starting to come together for the alpine team, and they continued to roll along with a strong performance by Catherine Sheils on Sunday at a FIS Eastern Cup SL race with the majority of the collegiate field plus other top Eastern athletes.  Sheils was 8th after the first run, and despite a brief “hip check” fall in the second run, held on for 13th place.  Next up, the team takes to the hill at Stowe, VT for the UVM winter carnival.  Don’t forget, you can “watch” the race results in real-time at www.live-timing.com!

Nordic Report by Chris City

Our headline result this weekend was the team’s 5th place finish in the women’s classic sprint relay on Saturday.  It was an unusual format for us: teams of 3 skiers, with each skier racing 1 km and then tagging off in the stadium to the next leg.  Each skier raced three legs.   Esther Kennedy got pinched between other skiers at the start and finished her first lap in 11th, but within sight of a number of other racers.  Audrey Mangan picked up a few of these spots, moving us to 8th.  In their second laps, Cara and Esther continued to close the gap to the skiers in front of them while holding off the teams Audrey had passed.  On her second lap, Audrey moved the team up to 6th.  Esther stumbled going out of the stadium for the final lap, but still managed to close on Dartmouth’s B relay skier in 5th.  Audrey caught the Dartmouth skier as she came into the stadium to tag off to Cara and then Cara opened up the gap by a few more seconds.  It was really exciting to watch our team race through the pack!  It was a team effort: Audrey passed the teams in front of her and Esther and Cara helped make that possible by skiing consistently fast splits even as other teams started to fade on their second and third laps.   We finished ahead of all but 4 A teams (Dart, Midd, UVM and UNH).

Our women’s B relay team skied very well, too, finishing ahead of two A teams (St. Mike’s and UMPI) and a number of B teams. Anchoring our B team, Alena Tofte skied splits that were as fast as those on our A team, and Anika Petach’s were not far behind.  Our guys skied fast early splits but faded as the race went on.  They finished ahead of Bowdoin and were battling with St. Mike’s through the last few laps, but just couldn’t hang onto them near the end of the race.

Tony

Cara

Kevin

Following a highly successful training camp in and around Jackson, NH, the team opened its carnival season last weekend in the Olympic venues at Lake Placid:

Alpine Report from Tim Mitchell

The Harvard Alpine team got the carnival season underway this past weekend at Whiteface Mountain, just outside Lake Placid, NY.  Soft snow and extremely difficult course and snow conditions made things difficult for the Harvard skiers, who were starting further back in the field.  As a whole, the men’s team skied very aggressively and were it not for a few unfortunate and untimely mistakes caused by rapidly deteriorating course conditions, would have surely seen at least three of our skiers knocking on the door of the top-15.  Nonetheless, our men’s team battled hard and put in some solid finishes, with Chris Kinner and Kevin McNamara scoring 32nd and 34th place respectively in the GS, and Kevin McNamara 34th again in the slalom.  On the women’s side, veteran Margie Thorp used her experience to overcome  one of the last starting spots in the women’s GS to lead the charge for the Crimson in 37th, followed by Caroline McHugh in 38th.  The women put things together a bit more in the slalom, with freshmen Catherine Sheils notching a 21st in her first collegiate SL, not far behind were Caroline McHugh in 24th and freshmen Tenley Mamlquist in 31st.  The team was largely victimized by a lack of training in soft, rutty, bumpy snow conditions; but the last few days have provided just those kind of training conditions, so everyone is eagerly anticipating upcoming carnivals. You can check out all the racing live via the internet at www.live-timing.com!

Nordic Report from Chris City

We had a very solid opening weekend of racing on the nordic side.  The headline was that Audrey Mangan and Esther Kennedy placed 12th and 13th respectively in the 5km classic, while Cara Sprague was not far behind in 27th.  These placings gave us a 5th place finish in the women’s race (ahead of UVM and Williams!).  Conditions were really tricky with alternating rain, sleet and snow creating variable conditions on the course.  As you know, it’s very difficult to find a wax that will work through all those conditions. With the women, we found something that would work on the rainy parts of the course and not be too slow in those areas at higher elevation where the precipitation was falling as snow.  When the guys started, the snow line shifted and in a few short minutes it had covered much more of the course.  Because of their early start positions, Trevor Petach and Kevin Sprague were able to finish much of their races before their skis stopped working; Tony Ryerson wasn’t so lucky and his finish place reflects that.

On Saturday we had a mass-start skate race.  Conditions were more stable than on Friday; however, warm temperatures and the multiple lap of the field in each race (men did 4×5km, women did 3×5km on the same course) led some uphills to turn to the consistency of mashed potatoes.  For the same reason, many of the downhills developed large berms of snow on the turns, which can make steep downs rather tricky. Trevor got a great start and maintained a good pace throughout the 20km race.  Kevin overcame a collision near the start and a broken pole later in the race.  He moved from the mid-60s at one point to eventually catch Trevor and finish in the low 30s.  For the second day in a row, Tony was saddled with some slow skis.  The women were boxed out at the start and ended up behind a bottleneck when the race entered the narrower trails in the woods.  They – along with much of the pack –  came to almost a complete stop until the traffic jam cleared and spent the rest of the race trying to move up.  Audrey did the best job of this, slowly moving from the low 40s and ending up 30th.  The rest of the women were close behind her.  Clare Miller in particular is showing huge gains from last year, while Alena Tofte and Anika Petach had very promising debut weekends.