Skiing Finishes Ninth at the UVM Carnival

Another race, another top-10 finish for the Harvard skiing team, which placed ninth out of 16 teams with 284 points.

“I think the team really did well this weekend. Everyone set pre-race goals and most people achieved them,” sophomore Nordic skier Rachel Hampton said. “I think everyone was aggressive in the races and even if it didn't quite have the end result they wanted, everyone could feel good about attacking the races.”

The group finished 656 points behind the winner of the Carnival at Stowe Mt. Resort and Trapp Family Lodge—Vermont.

“We all came into this weekend really focused and excited to take the lessons from the first weekend of racing and apply them to this weekend to feel good and produce strong results,” said captain and Nordic skier Akeo Maifeld-Carucci.

Maifeld-Carucci led the team with two top-10 finishes. His best race was the 10K freestyle, where he finished with a time of 25:46.2, which gave him the fourth place finish out of 92 skiers.

It was a fight to the end of the race for Maifeld-Carucci, who was just edged out by the No. 3 skier, Université Laval’s Frederic Touchette, who finished only .2 seconds ahead of the Crimson competitor.

“I felt like I had solid performances this weekend,” Maifeld-Carucci said. “I felt a little more tired than last weekend but thought I skied well technically. Especially Friday's race had really tight times, so it was really important to try and push for every second as that correlated to several places for some people.”

In his second race of the Carnival, the 15K event, Maifeld-Carucci crossed the finish line at 42:29.8. At number eight of 82 racers, he finished one spot off from his bib slot, nearly ten seconds off from the seventh place finisher, Will Wicherski from Williams College, and just two seconds ahead of the ninth place finisher, Patrick McElravey from Middlebury.

Freshman Nordic skier Connor Green and sophomore Nordic skier Devlin Shea finished the 10K in spots better than their bib slots, taking the 46th and 47th spots, respectively.

Green finished with a time of 27:42.3. Shea was right on his heels, finishing 1.2 seconds after his teammate.

Green also finished No. 44 in the 15K race—12 spots better than his bib slot—with a time of 45:37.8.

For the women, Hampton nearly broke into the top-10 in the 10K race, finishing it at 33:38.8. This gave her an 11th place finish out of 99. It was another close race for the Crimson team, with Hampton finishing just one second behind UVM’s Stephanie Kirk.

In the 5K race, Hamptons ranked in the top-15 again, just nabbing the 15th spot of 103 competitors with a 15:10.0 time. Her race was close went down to the last few seconds, with her following the 12th place finisher, Emily Hannah from Dartmouth, by just .7 seconds.

“I think it was a really good weekend for me,” Hampton said. “I'm just consistent [in] moving my way up in the pack and a personal best finish of 11th was really encouraging. I think I stuck to my race strategy and also raced with a lot of guts and no fear.”

Junior Nordic skier Hannah Barnes was in the top-50, placing 44th with a time of 36:32.2.

Alpine skier freshman Kelly Steeves finished the giant slalom course in 2:18.59, earning her 23rd place; and finished the regular slalom course in 2:13.63, giving her 27th place. Junior Jack Stobierski placed 30th in the slalom course, finishing in 2:10.98.

“This weekend was the end of the first third of the race season, and we have been training fairly hard steadily for almost the past month, so we are taking this next week to rest and recover a little before we dive into the rest of the season,” Maifeld-Carucci said.

—Crimson staff writer Katherine H. Scott can be reached at katherinescott@college.harvard.edu.