St. Mike’s Carnival Report
January 26th, 2010The 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
- Esther
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
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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 
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.
