The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Courtesy of Matt Briggs Fred Bailey '07

The nordic ski team continued their winning ways this weekend. The men and women competed at the Dartmouth College Ski Carnival, which was held in Stowe, Vermont. due to a snow-less Hanover, New Hampshire, in a mass start classic race on Friday and relays on Saturday. With the men placing fourth and the women seventh on Friday, the nordic squad as a unit finished the day in fourth place with 113 points.

The women's nordic team once again got great performances from Captain Kathleen Maynard `09 and Mandy Ivey `10. Maynard, who has been no stranger to the leaderboard this season, finished in fifteenth place in the 15-kilometer mass start race posting a time of 56:25.4.

Ivey crossed the finish line 35 seconds behind her teammate, which was good enough to place her twentieth overall in one of her strongest collegiate races to date.

The women were once again able to count on their growing depth with Jennie Brentrup '10, Rose Long '10 and Linnea Rooke '09 finishing in fortieth, forty-first and forty-second place, respectively. All three skiers were inexperienced in collegiate racing coming into the season, but skier Austin Ross `08 said that the three have been vital to the women's success this year.

"It's good that Jennie, Linnea and Rose are pretty consistent," he said. "They aren't quite where Kathleen and Mandy are, but we can count on them every week to come through."

The women's team of Ivey, Brentrup and Maynard finished in sixth place on Saturday in a 3x5-kilometer relay.

The men's team depth proved to make the difference for the second straight week with all six male competitors finishing in the top 22 in their 20-kilometer mass start race on Friday.

"It was a cool race," Ross said. "We skied most of it together, and at a lot of points the sixth place guy could look up and see all five guys ahead of him."

Ross attributed the close racing not to tactics, but to the fact that the team has been training together for so long and is so competitive with each other.

Matt Briggs `09 had a breakout race for the Mules, leading the way with his eleventh place finish. The sophomore covered the 20-kilometer course in 1:05:37.7.

Fred Bailey `07 was the next Colby skier to finish just behind Briggs in fourteenth place, and Nick Kline `08, Ross, Silas Gill `09 and John Swain `08 were tight on his heels finishing in sixteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-second place, respectively.

The men's nordic team also competed in a relay on Saturday with Kline, Bailey and Swain each traversing 10-kilometer legs; the team finished in 1:24:18.5, which put them in eighth place.

As hot as the men's nordic team is in competition right now, things might be getting even hotter away from the snow with their annual calendar hitting the shelves this week. The 12-month spread features all your favorite nordies in the buff with conveniently placed skis, medicine balls and door frames; contact a member of the team for details.

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