Radcliffe Skiers on Championship Pace

An unknown and unpraised Radcliffe ski team has been doing all season what the Harvard team has found impossible: winning races. With only one race left in the season, the team has an excellent chance to once again take home the intercollegiate team championship.

While skiers raced on their own earlier in the season, the team had its first race of the season on February 9 at Mt. Tom. The race was highlighted by first and third place finishes for co-captains Debbie McLane and Kathy Angell. Despite the efforts of McLane and Angell, the team stumbled from its first-place pace in that race, finishing a close second to UMass.

The team has missed the first place honors only one other time this season, and then only because it lacked the services of co-captain Kathy Angell. With the full team skiing once again the team's chances look good for a title-clinching first place this weekend.

If the team can come through again it will continue a ten-year string of division titles that is broken only by several years of Radcliffe's absence from the circuit.

The strength of the team comes from co-captains McLane and Angell. Lisbeth Hussey of U Mass is the only skier in the division who has been able to stop the deadly duo. Even she has managed the feat only twice during the season and then only with the Radcliffe skiers hot on her heels.

Radcliffe Stars

Radcliffe's domination of the division is more an indication of the circuit's weakness than Radcliffe's real strength. While McLane has placed well racing on her own in U.S. Eastern Amateur Ski Association races, winning the senior division of the New Year's cup at Pat's Peak on January 5 and the Mt. Snow Cup held at Mt. Snow on February 10, these races are marked by a distinct lack of good competition. In both cases the juniors class (18 and under) far outpaced the senior field.

Unlike the male circuit where good juniors find many opportunities open to them in colleges seeking to build strong teams, juniors on the female circuit who have not developed to Olympic caliber find few schools seeking after them. As a consequence, only schools like Dartmouth and Middlebury, where the expense of running a women's ski team is minimal, have been able to field even passable teams and Radcliffe has faced little real competition.