Above: Tri Captain Haley Yoki from Silver Bay lights up the Slalom course at the Hibbing Invite. Top: Ezra Lunde battled a headwall that was really rutted up and completed a solid race at Giants Ridge on January 7.
The Cook County Alpine Vikings traveled once again to Giants Ridge on Jan. 7 for the first race of the New Year. All seven teams from Arrowhead Conference plus Brainerd were in attendance for two exciting runs of Slalom racing.
The low the night before the race was 27 degrees F and the clouds produced three inches of wet, heavy snow. The weather on race day was a high of 31 degrees F and mostly cloudy with light snow falling throughout the day. It’s fun and unusual to wax for warm temperatures this time of year.
The Innsbruck run had been renovated with manmade snow and was not in very good shape, but Helsinki was a nice, fast sheet of ice.
First up for the girls was freshman Reilly Wahlers. She attacked the steep pitch of Helsinki and was looking great but crashed exiting a fast flush near the finish line. She demonstrated good sportsmanship, hiked and earned a second run, but finished the day at the back of the pack.
Next up was Alyssa Martinson who really stepped up with two fast completions landing in 5th place. Close behind, speedy Sela Backstrom skied great (7th) followed by Haley Yoki (14th) and nice skiing by Madysen McKeever (24th), who was our fourth scorer. Santina McMillan, Morgan Welch and Hanna Borson crashed on one of their runs.
Our girls finished the day in 3rd place losing to Brainerd (2nd) and Hermantown (1st).
On the boys’ side, Logan Backstrom went out in the first seed and skied a fantastic first run on Innsbruck (3rd), followed by Will Lamb who did his job and also skied a fast first attempt landing 1st. Erik Lawler continues to improve and also had a nice first run battling through the rutted up course finishing in 6th. Will Surbaugh also survived the tough course and skied fast (11th). By the time Ezra Lunde skied his first attempt, the headwall was really rutted and tore up and we were very proud of his solid completion at 16th.
One of Hermantown’s top boys had a miscue so we went into the break before the second run looking very good. We pushed the kids out of the chalet after a short lunch to get some free skiing in on the fresh snow and warm temps.
I watched Logan storm out of the gate and disappear over the headwall and heard on the radio, “Nice run, Logan complete.”
As I walked over to the girls’ start, I noticed a hold on the boys’ course only to find out that they didn’t get a time for Logan and that he would be granted a re-run. I stayed at the girls’ start and observed them inserting Logan right behind Will Lamb just as he pushed out of the gate. He nailed his run and skied fast enough to hold onto 1st place.
Logan went after it again and had a great run going, but booted a gate on the lower part of the course that almost completely stopped him. He unsuccessfully tried to recover, dramatically bouncing all over the place making the next two gates before crashing and ending as a DNF— did not finish.
Erik Lawler did a nice job for the team finishing the day in 7th. Will Surbaugh focused and held onto 11th. The depth of our boys’ team really showed with stellar skiing by sophomore Ezra Lunde (13th). Our boys’ team finished the day in 2nd place losing to Hermantown.
The team worked hard during the holiday break training at 9:00 a.m. on Koo-Koo approximately every other day. Attendance was very good and we are proud of the team’s commitment to each other and the program. One of our goals during holiday training was to generate more speed which was achieved. Now we need to work on fast body positions and keep generating speed, but learn to control it on race day. We are proud of the kids for pushing it, if we play it safe and just ski slow we don’t stand a chance in the competitive field we are up against.
The next race for the Alpine Vikes is the Moose Mountain Invite which was held before press time on Jan. 14, stay tuned for the outcome!
Leave a Reply