Skiing Kicks Off At Bates Carnival

The Harvard men’s and women’s skiing teams began their seasons this weekend at the Bates Winter Carnival in Rumford, Maine, placing ninth out of 13 teams with 124 team points.

Defending NCAA champion Dartmouth won the carnival with 493 team points.

Sophomore Audrey Mangan led the way for the women’s Nordic team with her 33rd-place finish in the 10K classic and her 35th-place finish in the 5K freestyle event.

In their first race for the team, freshmen Alyssa Devlin and Cara Sprague placed 30th in the 5K freestyle and 39th in the 10K classic, respectively.

“We had a big step up with freshman coming in big for the team,” said men’s alpine captain Matt Basilico.

Captain Oliver Burruss recorded the top times for the men’s Nordic team in the 10K freestyle and 10K classic, finishing 42nd and 59th, respectively.

Women’s alpine captain Alexandra Teng and sophomore Tess Wood finished 36th and 37th, respectively, in the slalom event on Saturday. Basilico recorded the best performance for Harvard in the slalom on the men’s side, finishing in 37th place. Just a few steps behind him was sophomore Chris Kinner, who skied to a 38th-place finish.

The balmy local weather forced the giant slalom event to be pushed back to yesterday from Friday. Additionally, the unseasonably warm weather has given the team an unexpected challenge in its winter training regime.

“We’ve been struggling with the weather for the past week or so,” Teng said. “The conditions have been really slick and not conducive to effective training.”

However, the circumstances did not slow down the team. Freshman Margie Thorp finished 52nd in the giant slalom event. Freshman Brad Alvarez also completed in two giant slalom runs despite injuring his shoulder in training on Saturday. Kinner recorded the best finish for the team with 32nd place.

In spite of the weather conditions and the temporal proximity of the carnival to final exams, the team’s overall ninth-place performance already marks an improvement. Last year, the Crimson finished in 10th place at the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association Championships.

“This weekend was tough because we had to train during reading period, and we’re all in the mindset of training and finals,” Teng said. “Even so, we’ve made a lot of progress, and everyone finished strong.”

The team looks to train over the intercession break before competing in the Vermont Winter Carnival on Feb. 1-2.

—Staff writer Lucy D. Chen can be reached at lucychen@fas.harvard.edu.