With only one carnival left before the NCAA Regional Championship, the ski team, ranked No. 5 in the SYNC ski coaches poll, continued its streak of second-place finishes at this past weekend’s Dartmouth Carnival. Despite competing in familiar territory as the host team, the Big Green finished with 841 points and once again fell short to the No. 4 ranked University of Vermont, who earned 926 points.
“For the ski team to win overall, all four teams have to perform their best on the same weekend,” director of skiing and women’s alpine coach Chip Knight said. “We’re still working on that.”
Opening the carnival on Friday, the women’s alpine squad dominated the giant slalom race at the Dartmouth Skiway in Lyme. Libby Gibson ’18 and Foreste Peterson ’18 established themselves as the duo to beat in the event after claiming the top two spots yet again, finishing 19-hundredths of a second apart from each other at 1:58.18 and 1:58.37, respectively. Gibson had the fastest first run with a time of 1:01.30 and the second-fastest second run with 56.88 seconds behind Vermont’s Ellie Terwiel, who finished third overall. Adding to the superb effort by the team, Lizzie Kistler ’16, Abigail Fucigna ’15, Kelly Moore ’18and Maisie Ide ’16 gave Dartmouth six of the top eight finishes. The Big Green defeated second-place Vermont by 28 points in the event with a total of 138 points.
Placing six starters in the top eight, Knight said, was a testament to the hard work everyone put in the week beforehand by participating in a crash course in skiing down the hill with limited repetitions.
“We only had four days on the hill before the event,” he said. “I’m very proud of the way the team handled itself and met the challenge.”
In the men’s giant slalom, Kevyn Read ’18 scored 44 points for the alpine team with a fourth-place finish and a time of 1:55.67, while Brian McLaughlin ’18 added 37 points with a sixth-place finish in 1:55.79. Sam Macomber ’16 completed the race in 1:56.73 for 13th-place, and Ben Morse ’14 finished behind him by two-hundredths of a second for 14th. With 105 points, the men’s alpine finished third in the event, and the Catamounts took first with 122 points with Middlebury College in second.
On the first day of the carnival, the Nordic team competed in a classic sprint at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont. The men’s squad placed second with 100 points, and the women took third with 89. Fabian Stocek ’17 led the men’s team in the sprint in third behind Vermont’s Jorgen Grav and Cole Morgan. Silas Talbot ’15 finished in 11th place, and Zach Goldberg ’17 earned 14th.
On the women’s side, Corey Stock ’16 was the lone Dartmouth finisher atop the podium with a second-place finish in the sprint. Emily Hannah ’16 placed 16th, and Mary O’Connell ’16 finished 24th.
“The Nordic team didn’t have as great of a race because of one of the races was a sprint, and we’re not a strong sprinting team,” Jan Ketterson ’17 said. “UVM skied really well, but as a whole, it was fun to ski at Craftsbury which is kind of our home course.”
The women’s alpine team had another stellar day with an additional 1-2 finish in the slalom race, this time coming from Ide and Kistler. Ide had the fastest first run and the third-fastest second run for a combined time of 1:45.52, putting her atop the podium with teammate Kistler, who finished second with 1:45.21. Moore finished in 1:48.52 for a 10th-place finish, helping the team to its first top finish in the event this carnival season. The Catamounts placed second, scoring 116 points to Dartmouth’s 128. The women’s alpine squad, Ide said, capitalized on its home hill advantage.
“It helped to train on the race hill the week before the race,” Ide said. “We carried the momentum from the previous day’s giant slalom results.”
Among a field of 71 athletes, including members of the U.S. and Canada Alpine Ski Teams, Morse finished in 10th in the men’s slalom with a time of 1:38.96. Macomber finished in 1:39.40 for 13th, and Read claimed 16th in 1:39.80. It was a difficult event for the men’s alpine team, who placed fourth overall with 95 points.
Men and women’s Nordic both placed third in the 10K freestyle races. Stock found herself atop the podium for the second time with a third-place finish in 31:30.4. Julia Harrison ’15 scored 25 points for the team after claiming 15th in the race, and O’Connell added another 23 points with an 18th-place finish. Overall, the women’s Nordic scored 92 points in the event, and the University of New Hampshire won with 116 points, with Middlebury again taking second.
Stocek, who won the 10K classic at the St. Michael’s Carnival, led the men’s Nordic squad again but was unable to make it atop the podium at Craftsbury. Instead, Stocek settled for sixth place with a time of 26:50.6. Talbot claimed ninth place in 27:00.5, and Luke Brown ’18 placed 10th with a time of 27:01.7. Overall, the men’s Nordic scored 94 points in the event, dropping to UVM and UNH for the second straight week since Patrick Caldwell ’17left to compete in the Under-23 Championships in Kazakhstan
This coming weekend, the ski team will end its carnival season at the Middlebury Carnival held at the Middlebury Snow Bowl and Rikert Touring Center in Vermont from Feb. 13-14.
