Skiing Finishes Top Ten in Maine

This weekend at the Colby Carnival in Waterville, ME., a Harvard women’s Nordic skier claimed a top-10 finish for the first time since 2013. Junior Rachel Hampton overcame the particularly challenging, hilly course to clock in a 52:07.9 finish, for a career-high ninth place of 87.

“It’s been a lot of hard work, and this course is very, very tough. I think I just went into it and skied tough,” Hampton said.

Dartmouth ultimately took first place of the 16 teams at the end of the weekend, and the Harvard Nordic and alpine team placed 10th for the second week in a row.

“That was a pretty solid finish,” junior co-captain Kaitlyn Gibson said, “We managed those really good course conditions and hard snow and put it together well.”

While the rest of the Northeast felt the blow of Winter Storm Jonas, the Crimson took advantage of the unusually clear, sunny skies and firm snow, showing strong performances from both the men’s and women’s sides.

Sophomore Pieter Weemaes and senior Simon Merryweather qualified for second runs three races in a row, both improving significantly between their first and second runs. In the giant slalom, Merryweather jumped from 84th place in the first run to 53rd, while Weemaes improved from 74th to 52nd. In the slalom, Merryweather advanced from 77th to 38th, and Weemaes from 82nd to 41st.

“There was some really fantastic skiing from Simon on a really difficult course,” Gibson said. “A lot of skiers were not able to finish that course…. but Simon was super in control and really solid, and I couldn’t see any mistakes from him.”

In the men’s team sprint, junior Devlin Shea and sophomore Haakon Sigurslid eked into the top 20 at 19th place, while sophomore Connor Green and co-captain Soren Anderson followed at 33rd.

Harvard’s top three finishers for the 15K classic were Ian Meyer at 35th of 85 with 44:55.9, Green with 46:19.4 at 52nd and Shea at 58th.

In the women’s 15K, the team’s first mass start classic race, Hampton was followed by seniors Hanna Barnes at 23rd place with 53:08.8 and Annie Harvieux at 32nd place.

“It was longer than some of our freshmen had done and it’d been a while since the rest of us had done a long race like that, so it was really exciting,” Hampton said. “Our women’s team did a really great job of getting out, getting into position, and competing the whole time.”

The duo of Hampton and Harvieux led for the Crimson team in the women’s team sprint, finishing at 22:04.7 for 15th place. Freshman Nina Armstrong and Barnes finished shortly after in 20th place with 22:12.7.

In both the women’s giant slalom and slalom races, three out of four skiers qualified for second runs. Sophomore Kelly Steeves claimed first for Harvard in the giant slalom in 27th place at 2:14.57, followed by Molly Leavens with 2:20.49 at 40th and Gibson with 2:34.45.

“[Steeves] was consistently getting in the top 30s as well last year, so it’s really good to see some consistency on her end,” Gibson said.

Steeves and Gibson both qualified for the second run in the slalom race with exceptionally good times, but only Gibson managed to finish the second run. The Alberta native clocked in at 38th.

“We did really well in the first run but we made mistakes in the second run which cost Kelly to not finish and impacted my time as well,” Gibson said.

The seasoned alpine skier remained optimistic, however.

“The race was a really promising thing to build onto for the race next week, and it gave us a little bit of confidence. I think we’re in a much better position right now than we were a week ago,” she said.

After suffering from a lack of practices due to unusually low levels of snow, the team has felt improvement from the better snow conditions.

“Hopefully these extra inches that we just got will allow us to get on to more terrain, and that will be a lot more fun and challenging for us,” Hampton said.

—Staff writer Jamie Chen can be reached at jamiechen@college.harvard.edu