With Mother Nature adding a little bit of zip to the Alpine race courses this week with her mix of rain, wind and freezing nighttime temperatures, competitors at the Class A racers at Mt. Abram had to be ready for just about anything during the two-day event.
“These were World-Cup-like conditions,” Edward Little High School coach Jodd Bowles said under clear skies as the wind whipped across the finish area. “It’s pretty slick up there.”
No one is arguing that Maine’s high school racers are ready for the big circuit, but The Eddies’ skiers did prove over two days that they are at least better than the rest of the schools in their class in Maine.
Maxx Bell led the way for EL with a first-place finish in the slalom Thursday and Kyle Mooney turned in a sixth-place finish to help the Eddies ease past Mt. Blue by just four points to win the overall Class A boys’ Alpine title.
“Our top three, they can finish in the top five if they finally lay one down,” Bowles said. “We had six running, and every one of them factored into the scoring at some point over the two days.”
The Cougars actually won the slalom event Thursday by three points, led by Samuel Smith in ninth position. But those three points didn’t make up enough ground after a seven-point team deficit in the giant slalom a day earlier.
Bobbles marred both teams’ totals on each day of the competition. Bell led after one run in the giant slalom, but fell to eighth in the second run. Thursday, the Cougars’ Kyle Farrington was in second after one run, but slipped to 31st after the second.
“All year, we’ve been saying we could win, but that Mt. Blue was going to be tough, very tough,” Bowles said. “They are tough, they work hard. There were those days where we might not have wanted to get out there and train, but we did that. And the guys clearly used every ounce of juice they had this week, and we were able to squeak one out.”
Gareth Robinson and Isaac Elliot were the third and fourth skiers to place for Edward Little. Elliot had a blistering first run, but he, too, stuttered in the second.
Mt. Blue’s Miles Pelletier (16th), Hunter Bolduc (18th) and Dylan Roberts (19th) completed the scoring for the Cougars.
Cape Elizabeth kept things close in the slalom and finished 18 points back of Mt. Blue in third position. Oxford Hills, led by Ryland VanDecker in third position, placed fourth in the slalom with 95 points, nearly a 100-point turnaround from the giant slalom on Wednesday.
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Tough conditions didn’t bother Brooke Lever.
The Edward Little senior paid no attention to those skiing in front of her as a handful fell during their second runs, choosing instead to visualize the tough Mt. Abram course in her own head.
“When I (watch), it tends to sike me out, so I try to focus on what I can do,” Lever said. “I didn’t listen to anything anyone else said. I just said, ‘I’m going to go for it, it’s my last run of my senior year.’ I’m just glad I finished.”
She’s even happier she finished on top.
Lever put together a pair of blistering slalom runs Thursday to earn the Class A girls’ slalom title in her final high school race.
“It feels great, I can’t ask for anything else,” Lever said. “I would have been happy with any position, but to win feels absolutely crazy. I don’t do it that often, but it feels great.”
And, in an ironic twist, after her second run, it was Lever speaking into a walkie-talkie letting the rest of her team know how the course felt.
“It starts to open up a little bit more (in the middle),” she said into the radio, “but let everybody know to be really high and early at the top couple gates.”
With a substantial lead after the giant slalom on Wednesday, though, it was Falmouth’s day for a coronation on Thursday. Krysia Lesniak and Alex Shapiro finished fourth and fifth, Kelly Frumer placed 13th and Audrey Morin 17th to lead Falmouth to the slalom and overall Alpine titles.
“They knew they had a lead,” Falmouth coach Tip Kimball said. “I made sure they knew what the situation was, from an analytical point of view. They knew what the risks were, and of course they knew what the reward was.”
Cape Elizabeth vaulted EL into second, helped by Emma Dvorozniak’s third-place finish.
Caroline Burns led Oxford Hills with a sixth-place finish. The Vikings placed 12th as a team.
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