SEASON RECAP: Skiing

Winter sports are always “intense.” But for the Harvard skiing team this season, the sport was one played “in tenths,” with the Crimson finishing 10th in every carnival this season and in the season-ending EISA championships.

“We’ve been static around tenth place in the EISA for many, many years,” men’s Nordic captain Russ Leino said. “[Our goal is] to inch up a few places over the next couple years...On the long term, I think [Nordic coach] Peter [Graves] and the rest of the coaching staff want to return Harvard to glory days.”

The 2005 season caught the team in the middle of a series of transitions, with the composition of the squad changing and skiers and coaches altering and expanding their roles in the program.

Sophomore women’s Nordic captain Jenna Harlow rose to fill the big boots left empty by the graduation of four-year NCAA competitor Anna McLoon ’04.

“The ski team is in the process of going from a very small, unseen group of people with occasional stars like Anna into what hopefully will be a much bigger more prominent team like those we competed against,” Harlow said in an e-mail.

The only experienced women’s Nordic skier, Harlow led the Crimson this season, making significant strides to try to close the gap left by McLoon.

Harlow led Harvard at EISAs, finishing 26th in the 5K classic in 18:33 and 45th in the 15K free technique, and she narrowly missed qualifying for NCAAs.

She finished 24th at the St. Michael’s Winter Carnival and 20th at the Dartmouth Carnival, where she also teamed up with freshman Oliver Burruss and sophomore Magnus Grimeland in the 28th-place 3x5K mixed relay.

“My goal for next season is to make NCAAs,” Harlow said.

For the men’s Nordic squad, Grimeland took 56th in the 10K classic at EISAs.

The squad was buoyed by freshmen, including Burruss—who led the 20K free technique in 54th—Steve Amrock, and Chris Naples.

“We had a lot of newcomers on the men’s team and they performed incredibly well for never having skied in their lives,” Leino said. “The new coach that took over, Peter Graves, is phenomenal, and he’s turning it into something that’s really legitimate.”

Coach Justin Rouleau took the reins of the alpine squad from five-season coach Lisa Smyth.

On the women’s side, junior Susannah Dickerson and captain Molly Simmons repeatedly turned in finishes near each other in the slalom.

Sophomore co-captain Dan Tsai led the men’s team at EISAs, taking 37th in giant slalom and 42nd in slalom, followed by sophomore co-captain Eric Ode.

Tsai finished 31st in slalom at the Dartmouth Carnival, where freshman Matt Basilico took second.

If revitalized leadership may enable the transformation, new talent will drive it, as Graves’ recruiting looks to bring in more experienced skiers and reduce the team’s reliance on athletic novice skiers such as Leino, a late transfer from cross country.

“People are so young and so inexperienced, you can’t compete on the level of these guys who have been skiing 20 years, practically,” Leino said. “I think we can begin to get more competitive as we continue to improve technique and experience, and I think that some of the new people will be able to add to our team significantly.”

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.