BRIDGTON — Mt. Blue’s Taylor Gordon and Falmouth’s AJ Noyes earned slalom victories Saturday and led their teams to Class A Alpine state championships at Shawnee Peak.
The Mt. Blue girls began the day with a two-point deficit to defending champion Edward Little. By the end of the day, the Cougars were celebrating in Farmington. Gordon’s victory with a combined time of 1:41.27 in the slalom helped the Cougars claim the team title with 1,481 points. Edward Little was the runner-up with 1,428 points.
“We are getting a police and fire escort into town,” Mt. Blue Alpine coach Mark Cyr said later Saturday.
Gordon’s victories put the Cougars over the top, but her slalom victory wasn’t assured until the second run.
“It is huge for a freshman. She is just a freshman,” Cyr said. “She was OK with yesterday’s (fifth-place finish in the giant slalom), but you could tell she really wanted to win one of the disciplines. She came in today with the first run and she was a little behind, but not a lot. She wasn’t in first place after the first run. She has done this a number of times this year. She has not been first after the first run but come back and won.
“She said she liked doing that, feeling out the first one, feeling confident and coming in and ripping the second run. As a coach, it is frustrating because you kind of worry about her. She has done it over and over this year.”
Anna Baldwin of Hampden Academy (1:41.62) and Tellie Satmaris of Cheverus (1:44.57) rounded out the top three in the girls slalom.
Cyr said that the Cougars took care of business all season.
“They didn’t need to set a world record,” Cyr said. “They needed to do what they were asked to do, which was just give us solid runs and we can walk away.
“We knew we were two points behind Edward Little after the first day, but we also knew that we were a better slalom team than we are a GS team. We were pretty confident that we could come out of today ahead of Edward Little. They had a couple of problems, but we were pretty confident that our slalom performance would be better than our GS.”
Courtney Larson placed fifth in the slalom for the Red Eddies, and teammate Miranda Chadborne was ninth.
Oxford Hills’ Elizabeth Dieterich took fourth and teammate Isabella DeVivo came in ninth.
The Mt. Blue boys team finished second with 749 points in slalom. Eli Yeaton finished fourth for the Cougars with a combined slalom time of 1:35.47, and Joshua Smith took took 13th with a combined time of 1:42.73.
“I am very proud of the girls and very proud of the boys,” Cyr said. “The boys did a great job, and Falmouth is tough. I am very proud of both teams. They worked hard all year, and through some adversity. They did a great job.”
Noyes added a slalom championship to the giant slalom title he won Friday, and the Yachtsmen placed four skiers among the top 11 as they easily won their fourth straight Alpine boys championship.
Noyes had a two-run time of 1 minute, 32.08 seconds. Marshwood’s Sean Maguire was second in 1:32.85, and Falmouth’s Ben Keller placed third in 1:35.16.
Ben Adey (eighth, 1:41.46) and Nick Shapiro (11th, 1:42.50) also scored for Falmouth, which finished the two-day event with 1,555 points — 57 more than Mt. Blue.
The Oxford Hills boys had a pair of top-10 finishes: Colby VanDecker took fifth and Thomas Bancroft came in 10th.
Sun Journal sports reporter Tony Blasi contributed to this report.
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