Throughout the season, the Cook County/Silver Bay girls’ Alpine team has been making noise in the regional race circuit. The girls are strong and they won several meets with numerous top individual performances and plenty of hardware. Theseason’s typical meet consisted of eight to 10 regional teams with 75+ skiers at each meet. TheSection 7 meet brought in 19 schools with each school fielding its top six skiers including several northern suburb powerhouses such as Chisago Lakes, Centennial, Blaine, Andover and others. TheSection meet had the Vikings competing in an arena with schools and athletes they have not competed against all year. It’s a new look, a new meet. Simply put, the Section 7 race is one race, on one day, with the best of the best.
How did they do? They
won.
Not only did our girls win the Section tournament, they won by a fair margin and took down perennial favorites Duluth East, Chisago Lakes and Hermantown. The last Section 7 victory for the girls’ Alpine Vikings was 17 years ago – in 1993.
All six girls had outstanding performances. Signe Larson was fourth overall, followed by Molly Rider in sixth place. Katie Smedstad and Ali Boettcher finished 17th and 27th. Rose Ingebrigtsen and Megan Lehto tied for 38th in a field consisting of 97 top racers.
In addition, and as a result of their top 10 performances, Signe Larson (ninth grade) and Molly Rider (11th grade) qualify for the State meet as individual racers. Therefore, the Alpine Vikings will be competing as a team while also having the opportunity to compete as individuals.
Like the girls’ team, the boys were competing in a very tough field of Section 7 elite racers. And this is where ski racing becomes difficult; there is no mercy. One slip, one straddle, one fall, and the day is done as a team. The boys’ team had a mixed bag of success and agony. Anders Zimmer (ninth grade) finished 20th among 100 racers where the difference between 10th place and 20th place was just 2.37 seconds. Karl Ingebrigtsen put together two consistent runs and finished 32nd. Colin Berglund and Luke Fenwick each had one run that placed them in the top third of the field but were unable to lace together two consistent runs. Dexter Yoki and Clay Gruber-Schultz rounded out the boys’ team, finishing 54th and 76th place respectively, resulting in a 10th place team finish – a pretty solid showing considering two of our top skiers had a hiccup on the course.
The State meet is scheduled for Feb 10 at Giants Ridge. There are four Sections for Alpine skiing. Thetop two teams from each Section compete at the State meet consisting of eight teams including athletes who qualified as individuals.
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