Stowe, Vt. -- Dartmouth's Erin Quinn-Hurst '02 brought life to the women's cross-country team with a second place finish in Saturday's 15K freestyle race, holding off the Vermont Catamount star Ekaterina Ivanova. The Big Green skiers fared well overall, but Vermont skiers absolutely peaked on their home courses, winning seven of eight races and taking all but four of the top 24 places.
Quinn-Hurst managed quite an improvement on Friday's 12th place finish, and had the best finish of her collegiate career. Tessa Benoit of Vermont won both women's races.
The Big Green men's cross-country team, which has worked hard to find top results the past two years, has found some consistency and a 4-5-6 finish by Scott McArt '01, Nils Arvold '00, and Stephen Donahue '00 in Friday's 10k classical -- one of the best group results yet.
"Their fitness is starting to pay off as we get tougher courses on the carnival circuit," coach Ruff Patterson noted.
Kris Freeman of Vermont, who won the 10k and finished second behind teammate Dave Stewart in the 20k freestyle race, has jumped back on the carnival circuit after time in the Czech republic at the World Junior Championships.
Jeremy Joseph '00 has become a consistent scorer for the Dartmouth men's alpine squad, and this past weekend, he finished fourth in the slalom and seventh in the GS. The slalom race times had a wide spread, with about a second separating each of the four top finishers from each other.
Scott Kennison's winning time of 1:34.32 was nearly four seconds better than Joseph's 1:37.22. On the other hand, a mere one-hundredth of a second separated Maciej Zwiejski and Dawson Brown '02, who finished sixth and seventh for the Big Green. G.W. Watts '02 was 10th in both the GS and slalom.
Vermont's Matthew Knittle won the GS race.
Gusty Swift '01 continued her downhill success, though this week it was the UVM racers who found the top of the podium. Shaina Mulkern of UVM and Brooke Laundon of Middlebury had victories in the women's GS and slalom.
Swift took third in the GS and fourth in the slalom. Teammate Jeannie Eisberg '01 had the third fastest time in the second run of the slalom Saturday.
As the course warmed during the day, the "reverse-30" format of the second run allowed conditions to take effect on race results. In the reverse-30 format, the first racer of the second run is the 30th fastest skier of the first run. The second skier down the course is the 29th fastest of the first run, and so on.
In the warm weather, the course softened, and ruts developed by the time the racers with the fastest first run times headed down the mountain. Because the slower skiers had a significant course advantage in the second run, times were unpredictable, and the race became more exciting and suspenseful than usual.
UVM handily proved its superiority at home. Next weekend, the carnival circuit moves to Hanover for the Dartmouth Carnival.
