Ski season picking up in The County
Nordic skiers competed at the Nordic Heritage Center in Presque Isle and alpine skiers were at Fort Kent’s Lonesome Pine Trails for a meet as the season is now getting into full gear after a slow start.
Cross country skiers had to wait a day after the meet was pushed back due to cold temperatures, but in the freestyle meet last Wednesday, the Caribou boys and Madawaska girls used their depth to record victories.
The Vikings scored 15 points by featuring the first, third, fifth and sixth-place finishers. Riley McDuffie won in 15:56, Dan Randolph was third in 16:56, Lukas Lagasse fifth in 17:26 and Caleb Willett sixth in 17:35.
Max Bartley actually had the second-fastest time at 16:01, but his Wildcat team did not have enough participants to figure in the team results. Malcolm Milligan of Ashland registered a top-10 effort with a clocking of 17:01. Thomas Krause of Fort Fairfield and James Cyr of MSSM led their respective teams.
In the team results, Fort Kent was second behind Caribou with 35 points, with Madawaska and Ashland following.
For the girls, Olivia Jandreau of Madawaska led the field with a time of 19:13 and spearheaded her Owl team’s victory.
They posted 25 points as Kasie Blanchette, Chelsea Daigle and Aspen Cote all came in the top 10.
Madeline Gudde and Kendra Furber, both of the Vikings, came in third and fourth, respectively. Gudde’s time was 19:59 and Furber’s was 20:15. Their Caribou squad took second with 32 points.
Presque Isle’s Tori Koch was fifth in 20:32 and teammate Izzy Jackson was seventh in 21:11. The Wildcats were third with 41 points on the afternoon.
In Saturday’s alpine event, which had to be switched from Bigrock due to the lack of snow at the Mars Hill mountain, the Warriors swept all four races — the girls’ and boys’ morning and afternoon competitions.
Presque Isle had the leading individual efforts in both boys’ races. Nick Bartlett won in the morning with at time of 1:42.84 and Bryce Smith captured the afternoon runs in 1:42.66. Lane Grass of CA had a pair of third-place peformances, with nearly identical times of 1:45.78 and 1:45.34.
Alyssa Sweeney paced the Wildcats by taking seventh place in both races. He time was 1:59.43 in the first race and 1:56.33 in the afternoon.
