Skiers Slip, Slide at Carnivals

Harvard's ski team continued its slide this weekend, as the skiwomen dropped to Division II for next year, placing next to last in the Division II Championships, and the men placed tenth and last for the third week in a row.

Though the women managed to display some stellar individual performances, qualifying three racers in next week's Division I Eastern Championships, the team as a whole failed to ski past any but lowly Cornell.

Hampered by the defection of alpine star, Kristin Hodgkins, who quit the team after it was forced into Division II for a week, only alpine captain Vera Fajtova, nordic captain Maureen Devlin, and fellow cross-country specialist Missy Holbrook put together memorable races.

Fajtova skiied to her best results of the winter, placing second in the slalom and fourth in the giant slalom. Devlin and Holbrook poled to second and fourth finishes in the cross-country event. In a bright spot for next year, Yvonne Nomizu finished in the top 30, placing in her first ever cross-country race.

Despite her second-place finish,. Devlin could not hide her disappointment. "Division II is really the pits," she said, adding, "The competition is really bad; you can't go anywhere from there. The division is just sloppy--they don't print up results right away. We haven't seen official placings yet."

"Losing Kris really hurt us," Devlin said. "Kris would have made the difference between Division I and Division II" she added.

The Crimson men's tenth place finish at last weekend's Williams Carnival does not represent the full-strength talents of the squad, as illnesses and injuries have left the snowmen short of racers. "I put together a team the night before we went up by calling around," alpine captain Erik Klaussen said yesterday.

Because of the chronic lack of snow, the nordic events were held at Dartmouth, while the alpiners traversed gates on the flat, icy terrain of Brodie Mountain.