Every spring, Harvard honors its top scholar-athletes at the Senior Letterwinners’ Dinner. This year’s crew of eleven award winners featured two of our very own:

Trevor Petach took home the John P. Reardon award, which recognizes the senior varsity male athlete who best exemplifies the qualities of excellent scholarship, character, leadership and athletic ability. We’re happy that the greater Harvard athletic community recognized what we on the ski team already knew. We’ll miss Trevor’s scientific approach to skiing (not that the team seems to go lacking in this department… the coaches can recall their days on the team with lab rat Greg who talked often about the chemical properties of wax and was known to make jokes about peptides that everyone somehow found funny), but Trevor’s three rules of physics will continue to be part of our approach to encouraging aggressive downhill skiing. (Once we recall what the third rule is.)

Trevor, utilizing the physics of the pink headband

Katie Coil was the female recipient of the Francis H. Burr Scholarship, which holds the distinction of being the oldest of all the athletic awards at Harvard. It recognizes “all-around excellence,” another characterization with which we agree. We missed Katie’s enthusiasm and passion for skiing this season, but at the awards ceremony, her legendary squat prowess was highlighted among her many accomplishments and will continue to set the bar, so to speak.

Katie, with Trevor and Audrey at the awards dinner

Also during the ceremony, a dramatic and inspiring recap of the winter sports season recognized the roles that Chris Kinner and Tess Wood played in stepping up the level of Harvard Skiing in their four years and referenced Audrey Mangan’s role in making the women’s nordic team “a national powerhouse.” Duly noted.

Chris

Tess

Audrey

Congratulations to Margie, Alec, Cara, Clare, and Tor! At last week’s end-of-the-season banquet, the team elected these five to lead the way in the 2010-11 season:

Alpine

Margie Thorp

Alec Boardman

Nordic

Cara Sprague

Clare Miller

Tor O’Brien

Thank you to this year’s captains for a great four years. We’ll miss you!

Chris, Audrey, Tess, and Trevor

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.

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.

Both teams managed to find snow over the holiday weekend:

The alpine team in Colorado

The nordic team at Bretton Woods