After maintaining a slim four-point lead after the first day of racing, Dartmouth's ski team pulled through to clinch its narrowest victory yet at the Middlebury Carnival this weekend. The win marks the team's fifth consecutive win for the season. Dartmouth will enter next weekend's EISA Championships undefeated.
All four of Dartmouth's ski teams faced tough competition. and although strong individual performances helped accumulate the team's total of 881.5 points. Only two Big Green teams won their races as a whole, as compared to the three won by second-place finishers University of Vermont, who amassed 866 points.
"It was definitely tougher competition this week," women's cross-country coach Cami Thompson said. "UVM stepped it up on the first day of racing, and they had good races in men's cross-country and men's alpine in particular."
The women's cross-country team provided the two wins of the competition, and helped cement Dartmouth's already clear control of the trails. The women showed their versatility by winning the 3x5-kilometer freestyle relay. This was the first time the relay race was held this season. Dartmouth's team consisted of Rosie Brennan '11, Ida Sargent '11 and Sophie Caldwell '12, who dominated to garner an easy win for the Big Green, with an aggregate time of 49:37.7.
Although a new race to the lineup, the relay holds similar aspects from that of the individual freestyle, since all three teammates race the same distance. The only difference is that the time is the total team effort, Caldwell said.
Another main difference in the relay is the point allocation, according to Thompson.
"Our team won by quite a significant margin, but the problem with that is that you only get so many points for first place, and even though we had a great race, you don't get great points for great races," Thompson said.
Meanwhile in the 10-kilometer classic event, Brennan finished first, clocking 31:09.2, followed closely by Caldwell in second, who trailed by about 25 seconds. With Hannah Dreissigacker '09 earning a sixth-place finish and Sargent following up in ninth, four of the Dartmouth's Nordic women placed in the top 10 of the classic race.
The two wins that the women's Nordic secured contributed 272 points to Dartmouth's total.
"We always want to perform well for the whole team, but there are so many good skiers in the East right now that on any given day anyone could be on top, so it is definitely nice knowing our other teams are strong too," Caldwell said.
Placing in the top three of a race collects a few added points for the winning team. Strong finishes thus proved vital in the carnival, as UVM had higher-ranked team finishes than did the Big Green.
In the men's 10-kilometer classic, five of Dartmouth's skiers placed in the top 10, with Glenn Randall '09 finishing third with a time of 26:40.9, followed by Patrick O'Brien '10 in fourth, Nils Koons '11 in fifth, Ben True '08 in seventh and Ben Koons '08 in eighth.
Coming into the freestyle relay, Nils Koons was the leading bib rank for the race for the third straight weekend. In the men's 3x5 kilometer freestyle relay, Koons made up part of Dartmouth's highest placing team along with True and O'Brien. The team finished second with a total time of 41:25.3 -- a mere 2.9 seconds behind Middlebury.
Close finishes were common at the carnival. In the women's alpine slalom race, where Courtney Hammond '11 finished in second place behind UVM racer Megan Ryley by one tenth of a second. Co-captain Christine Roberts '10 had the next best result for Dartmouth, finishing eighth.
In the women's giant slalom, Hammond -- who has so far been undefeated in this event, and was ranked first going into the race -- struggled in the first heat and fell to 10th place.
Meanwhile, Kelsey Roddick '11 excelled in both her runs and placed second with a total time of 2:07.37, marking her best finish of the season.
Men's alpine, however, had shaky performances and placed fifth in both the slalom and giant slalom races. John Coats '09 had the best finish in the slalom race, in 12th place, with a total time of 1:34.88, while Francis Houle-Fortin '10 contributed 29 points with an 11th place finish and total time of 2:04.17 in the giant slalom.
Next weekend's Eastern Championships will be held at Colby College, and will wrap up the ski team's carnival season. The NCAA Championships will be hosted by Bates College, bringing Dartmouth back to where it first kicked off its triumphant season.
The Eastern Championships will begin on Friday with the men's 10-kilometer classic at 9 a.m.
