Skiers Happy With Performance at Middlebury

The Harvard ski team competed in the Middlebury Carnival over the weekend, placing 10th out of 20 teams in the competition, which doubled as the Eastern Intercollegiate Skiing Association (EISA) League Championships.

In the combined men's and women's alpine and nordic events, Vermont, Middlebury and Dart-mouth finished first, second and third respectively.

The alpine events at the Carnival were split into slalom and giant slalom races, while the nordic contests consisted of classic and freestyle skiing.

The 20 teams that participated in the competition included Division I and Division II schools from the EISA as well as a handful of schools from the National Collegiate Skiing Association (NCSA), including Massachussetts, Boston College and Ply-mouth State College.

The unusually high number of teams and skiers in the carnival forced officials to implement some changes in the format of the alpine portion of the competition.

Unlike most regular-season carnivals, where each school fields five skiers in the men's and women's alpine divisions, at the Middlebury event skiers had to qualify based on their top two prior finishes.

As a result, only two men's alpine skiers, co-captain Eric Horsley and freshman Dan Williams, and four women's skiers, freshman Carolyn McGill, freshman Katja Hrones, freshman Aubrey Spath and junior Katie Hatch, skied in the Weekend competition.

Also, to complete the required two runs per event in a timely fashion, the slowest finishers in the first runs were not allowed to ski their second run.

Event winners were those with the best combined times for two runs, with team points based on ordinal finishes of team members.

In the women's giant slalom, held on Friday, Kristen Rogers of Middlebury placed first, Andi Bither, also of Middlebury, finished second and Katty Northrop took third. Crimson finishers included McGill, 51st, Spath, 58th, and Hrones, 60th. Hatch did not place in the event as her first run was not fast enough to qualify her for the second run.

The top three finishers in the women's slalom were Rogers, Gibson LaFountaine of Vermont and Bither. Only McGill managed to place for the Crimson in the Slalom, finishing 52nd.

In the men's giant slalom, Nate Bryan of Middlebury finished first, Dartmouth's J.P. Daigneault placed second and Brett Grabowski from Vermont skied to a third-place finish. Harvard's Horsley finished 54th and Williams did not qualify for a second run.

The men's slalom on Saturday brought the most surprising result of the weekend as UMass skier Tom Schaefer finished first, Dartmouth's Andy Martin finished second and Bryan took third.

"We had not seen UMass skiers at our earlier Carnivals," Alpine head coach Ned Morse said. "I think by placing first in the slalom they sent a message to our league that there are some top skiers in the other league."

For the Crimson, Williams finished 49th in the Slalom and team mate Horsley did not place.

Although none of Harvard's alpine skiers qualified for the nationals, coach Morse said he was optimistic about the men's and women's alpine teams.

"The other team coaches would tell me that they noticed that Harvard skiers got better from race to race," said Morse, who is in his first year as Harvard's alpine coach.

"Our women's team was apparently not strong at all last year," Morse said. "Now we have several freshmen with high school race experience and our women's team has really shown great improvement."

"It's hard to quantify the improvement in our men's team," he said. "The two captains, Eric O'Brien and Eric Horsley, skied with the team last year but we got some good freshman talent."

"Dan Williams is our best young talent, and freshman Matt Ware has worked hard and shown great improvement," Morse said.

The nordic team fielded a squad of five men and four women in the competition and came away with a couple of outstanding individual performances.

Junior captain Molly Ware finished 12th in the nordic classical and 20th in freestyle while sophomore Matt Bellizzi finished 25th in the classical event and 12th in the freestyle.

Ware's and Bellizzi's ranking for the season left them on the bubble for qualifying for nationals. Both have been designated first alternates.

"Molly's and Matt's performances were our biggest successes in the carnival," student-coach Chris Leggett said of his teammates. "It's really tough for skiers from Boston to do well when all the other schools have easy access to mountains and trails."

Vermont skiers Trond Nystad, Aki Partanen and Camut Nystad (Twin brother of Trond) finished one, two, three in the men's classical.

Trond Nystad also took first in the freestyle race and Partanen took second again. Zach Caldwell of Middlebury finished third.

"Vermont recruits a lot of skiers from Scandanavia--from Norway and Finland," Leggett said. "There's a little bit of resentment because of that, but it does elevate the level of competition."

Middlebury performed very well in the women's nordic event as six skiers qualified for nationals. Because of national tournament rules, however, only four will be allowed to represent the school.

Leggett, a senior who coached his high school ski team last year during a year off from Harvard, was pleased with his team's performance over the season.

"We had a great season," Leggett said. "It was by far the best in 10 years or so."

In combined alpine and nordic scoring Vermont earned 1,199 points, Middlebury, with its home-snow advantage, took second at 1,164.5 points and Dartmouth finished third with 1,067 points.

The Crimson's 10 place total of 499 put them in the middle of the pack at the Carnival.