For the second straight weekend, the Dartmouth ski team took third place in Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA) competition. The University of Vermont won the carnival, hosted by St. Lawrence in Lake Placid, N.Y. by a large margin with 787 points. Middlebury placed second.
Dartmouth's cross country teams, despite missing varsity skiers Mike Sinnott '07, Glenn Randall '09 and Alison Crocker '06 (all competing in the World Junior and World Under-23 Championships in Slovenia), posted strong results both Friday and Saturday.
Due to the current lack of natural snow in the East, nordic races were moved to the artificial snow at the base of the MacKenzie-Intervale Ski Jump Complex. With aerial skiers flying above them, the 10-kilometer men's and six-kilometer women's classic races consisted of multiple laps of a two-kilometer course.
In the men's race, Ben True '08 finished the five laps in 25:03 to place second, 17 seconds behind Garrott Kuzzy of Middlebury, and Sam Naney '06, coming off a fourth place finish last week, skied easily into the sixth spot. Overall, Dartmouth finished with three skiers in the top 10, capped off by freshman Max Hopkins' surprise eighth place showing. In extremely tight team results, the men's team finished only three points behind Middlebury and one point behind Vermont.
The women also placed three in the top 10. Susan Dunklee '08 skied a strong, solid race to place third. Just seconds behind her were Kristina Trygstad-Saari '07 in sixth and Elsa Sargent '08 in ninth. CassidyEdwards of Middlebury won the race in 17:19. Again, Dartmouth settled for third, falling to Middlebury and Vermont -- who tied for first -- by only three points.
On Saturday, in the nordic freestyle 4x4 kilometer mixed relay, Dartmouth delivered its finest performance of the competition. The relay teams consisted of four skiers, two women and two men, with three teams from each school. Each skier raced two laps of the course before tagging off to a teammate.
Dartmouth's first team, made up of Dunklee, True, Trygstad-Saari and Naney, won the race in an exciting photo finish against the University of Vermont. After Dunklee and True gained a fantastic lead early in the race, Vermont skiers slowly closed the gap until the final sprint in which Naney was able to hold off Anders Osthus of Vermont by milliseconds.
Dartmouth's second team of Sargent, Pavel Sotskov '09, Hannah Dreissigacker '09 and Zach Hall '06 took fifth in another close finish with Vermont's second team, which came in fourth. Dartmouth ended up in a tie for first with Vermont in the relay.
Meanwhile, Dartmouth's alpine team had a rough weekend with falls and disqualifications afflicting both the men's and women's teams at Whiteface Mountain. Dartmouth's best results were a pair of sixth place finishes in the slalom by Erik Johnson '06 and Sealy Livermore '08. Johnson's finish in the slalom came despite a broken thumb suffered in Friday's giant slalom.
Friday's races were disrupted due to wind delays, limiting the Big Green women to only run.
"The course was in rough shape, very chattery and icy," said Livermore. "It was so windy that the gates almost blew down."
Alexandra Fucigna '07 finished 16th, followed by sophomores Livermore and Hannah Tsai in 18th and 20th, respectively.
"We were all in position to move up, so we were disappointed that the second run was canceled," Fucigna said.
In the men's giant slalom, Karl Johnson '06 grabbed 10th and Dave Chodounsky '08 finished 17th.
The University of Vermont will host next week's carnival in Stowe, Vt. Nordic races will be held at the Trapp Family Lodge, and the alpine races will be held on Stowe Mountain.
