Sam Kapala and Coach Fisher. A senior, Sam had a fantastic 21st place finish to end his college career for the Purple Cows.
Fiona Worcester, also a senior who competed in her last college carnival.
Junior Alice Nelson racing to a hard-earned 13th in the women's mass-start.
Sophomore Kirsten Johnson had a great weekend, earning 9th in the skate and 14th in the classic.
Just one week after the 15km classic at World Championships saw the top six men (our own Kris Freeman being the 4th) using Zero/Multi skis, our own classic races at Sugarloaf showed the top of the field in both mens and womens races competing on these skis.
The skiers who did not have a pair of these specialty skis (including most of our team) had to deal with waxing for very difficult conditions. The tracks ranged from glazed and wet at the bottom of the course (which was great for klister or klister-covered) to powder on the top (which made even hard-wax skis ice and the klister a nightmare) to wet-snow tracks on the downhills back to the stadium.
Needless to say, it was a very tough race! There was talk afterward about having to harringbone up 3km of hills, having to stop multiple times to scrape ice off of kick zones, and having to ski even on downhills because of the slow, wet, tracks. Still, I am proud to say that none of our Williams skiers dropped out of the race. They held their heads up and toughed it out. And afterward the men's team was even surprised by the fact that they came in 4th - definitely the first team who raced without Zero skis! Our three scores came from Dimitri Luthi in 16th, Erik Anderson in 18 and - 3 tenths behind Erik - Evan Dethier in 19th.
The women's results took a bigger hit because after unsuccessfully waxing the men's skis, we decided to use Harries (when you rough the kick zone with sand paper, in effect, making no-wax skis) for the women's race. Unfortunately, the harries did not work very well either. Kirsten Johnson, our only racer who was able to race on Zero skis, was the only woman on our team to place in the top pack, at 14th.
Waxing for Saturday was a cinch, but the challenge came in the race's mass-start format. After a sprint start across a wide-open lake, the race course then continued onto a 5km loop that was VERY narrow, forcing the skiers to race strategically. It was an exciting race, and the cold, hard-packed snow made for extremely fast skiing. Kirsten Johnson had the best place of the day, finishing in 9th. Alice was just behind her in 13th, and Sarah Tory took her first score for the team in 34th. In the men's race, Alex Taylor took the race out fast with the lead pack and ended in 12th, Sam Kapala finishing in 21st, and Dimitri Luthi in 23rd.
NCAA qualifiers: Dimitri Luthi
Going into the weekend both Alice and Dimitri had a shot at a spot for NCAA's. Dimitri qualified in the tenth spot of the men's division. Alice proved her toughness on Saturday by having one of her best skate races of the season, but her main competitor for the last women's slot also had an outstanding race and Alice was edged out by only 2 points. The NCAA's will be on March 12 and 14 in Rumford, ME.
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