Skiing | Ski team scales peaks and valleys as captains crash and newbies excel

    After a weekend of top-notch skiing, the alpine ski team has left itself in strong position heading into the final weekend of regular-season racing.
    The men's team currently sits in third place in the Thompson Division, having racked up 27 points in eight races so far this season and leaving itself only a point off the pace of second-place Boston University. But since a somewhat tumultuous start to the season that saw the Jumbos finish fourth and sixth in their first two races of the season, the team has eclipsed BU's mark in five of the last six races, leaving the skiers confident in their ability to overtake the Terriers.
    "I think that barring anybody falling — basically as long as we can stand up — we can definitely overtake BU next weekend," sophomore captain Brian Bresee said.
    On Sunday, the men's squad finished the day at Dartmouth placing second out of 11 teams, topped only by the eventual victors from Castleton State, which has won all eight of its races this season. The Jumbos' top three finishers were Bresee with a two-race combined time of 2:05.57, sophomore Arlin Ladue with a mark of 2:09.24 and sophomore Thomas Valentin at 2:09.59.
    "Clearly, the strength is our team unity and the fact that we're competing very well even though we're a young team," junior Greg Hering said. "The majority of our talent pool is all sophomores. Our weakness is that we kind of fall a lot."
    Ladue's Sunday performance was particularly impressive. In his second race of the day, he skied the 3,000-foot course in a time of 59.78 seconds, a blazing average of 34 miles per hour. Ladue's time was also only one second off the pace of the first-place finisher, senior Justin Schwartz of Castleton State, and less than seven tenths of a second off the pace of his teammate Bresee.
    "Ladue had the race of his life," Hering said. "It was a treacherous, high-speed course. That hill is legendary. He creamed me; he beat the number two kid and came within [0.7 seconds], which is so close to the first. [His] top speeds were approaching 50 miles per hour."
    Bresee also had a stellar day individually. He finished in second place out of a large field of 87 finishers — though there were a handful of skiers who did not finish the race or were disqualified — and was less than eight tenths of a second out of first.
    With his strong Sunday showing, Bresee solidified his sixth-place overall individual standing on the year. Trailing Bresee are Valentin in ninth, Ladue in 20th and Hering in 24th.
    While the men took care of business on Sunday en route to their second-place finish, the women performed equally impressively but without the same result. The Jumbos, currently in sixth place on the season, finished fifth out of eight full teams. Three other teams were racing short-handed, resulting in a much higher score due to an automatic last-place score taking the stead of the absent skier.
    The Jumbos were led by freshman Jessica Levine, who came in with a time of 2:23.61 and was followed immediately by sophomore Lindsay Rutishauser with a time of 2:23.93 and freshman Fritzi Pieper at 2:32.19. Senior captain Alissa Brandon had a mediocre first race and did not finish her second, leaving her out of the mix on Sunday.
    "She fell and lost a ski," senior Pam Garfinkel said. "She was really ripping it down there and lost a ski or something. It's a really fast course at Dartmouth, so there are a lot of falls."
    Saturday, however, was a different story. Brandon, as per usual, led the women's team with a combined time of 2:25.01, which was good enough for an 18th-place finish in the field of 80. She was followed by Levine at 2:29.54 and Rutishauser at 2:33.58.
    Unfortunately, Brandon's strong finish did not lift the team to a higher overall result than on Sunday. Once again, the Jumbos finished in fifth place out of nine full teams.
    The men's team, in similar fashion to Sunday's result, took home second on Saturday as well. Bresee led the pack with a time of 2:14.12, Valentin was second with 2:15.88 and Hering third with 2:18.27.
    The last mountain standing between the Jumbos and the regional competition on Feb. 21-22 is Killington next weekend, a course where the Jumbos have had mixed results.
    "[Our] goals are just to keep up the momentum into the last race," Garfinkel said.
    "We've skied there a couple of times already this year. We're enthusiastic … We know the terrain pretty well. We'll be looking to exceed expectations, definitely."