Dartmouth takes first EISA Carnival win of the season

By Published On: January 22nd, 2017Comments Off on Dartmouth takes first EISA Carnival win of the season

EISA Carnival racing kicked off on Jan. 20-21 at Whiteface Resort in Lake Placid, N.Y., hosted by St. Lawrence University. Dartmouth College won the Carnival, powered by a powerful alpine women’s team as well as their dominant nordic team.

In Friday’s giant slalom, Middlebury College’s Caroline Bartlett took control of the day from the very beginning. She outpaced the rest of the women’s field by 1.06 seconds. Bartlett, a sophomore, took the second run by an even wider margin–1.92 seconds–leaving 3.89 seconds of room between her and second place finisher Kelly Moore of Dartmouth. Lisa Wedsjoe of the University of New Hampshire came in third, 4.10 seconds behind.

“For some reason, I just put it all together today,” Bartlett said.  “We have had a lot of awesome training at the snow bowl. The snow has been perfect.”

She said there is no better feeling than to get her first carnival win on Friday in their first race back as a team after losing a teammate, Murphy Roberts, this fall.

U.S. Ski Team athlete Nick Krause won the men’s GS by 0.45 seconds, but as a non-college athlete his results do not count towards any university’s points or qualifying for NCAA Nationals. University of Vermont (UVM) Catamount William St. Germain was the top scoring collegiate athlete after laying down two solid runs. Rob Cone from Middlebury ended the day as the second fastest college athlete, 0.92 behind St. Germain. Dartmouth freshman Tanguy Nef rounded out the EISA podium, 1.16 behind the winning pace.

Cone was just one of three Middlebury men to move up significantly in the second run. Cone, Riley Plant and Colin Hayes all took advantage of their start position second run, and while the sun hit the track at Whiteface, they waited excitedly to see where they would eventually end up. Cone, who won the second run by 0.93 seconds, moved a staggering 24 spots from 27th to third, Plant moved from 30th to ninth, and Hayes moved 15 spots to end in 10th place.

Cone said he was hoping to stay in the flip after a tumultuous first run, and luckily he did just that. He was able to run early second run, and he knows the hill at Whiteface very well which led to his complete control of the second run.

The conditions for the slalom on Saturday were not pleasant, and the course deteriorated quickly. The first racer to ski the course, Brian McLaughlin from Dartmouth took advantage of the opportunity and won the first carnival race of his career. McLaughlin was followed by U.S. Ski Team athlete Kipling Weisel, 0.25 seconds off the winning pace, and Guillaume Grand from Saint Michael’s College, 0.30 seconds back, in third. Fourth place for the day and third place in collegiate scoring was Griffin Brown from UVM.

“It’s kind of awesome because it was tough conditions, and bib one was definitely helpful first run, and then I just needed to fight all the way down to the bottom second run,” McLaughlin said of his day.

At the end of the day, Dartmouth finished with three men in the top 10 in collegiate scoring. Nef came in seventh and Tomas Woolson came in eighth. By the end of the men’s race, the team had heard of their team’s nordic success in which they won each event of the day, as well as all events throughout the weekend, and all they had to do was wait for their women to finish the day strong.

The Dartmouth girls certainly pulled through, putting three athletes in the top five. While UVM’s Paula Moltzan won the race, Dartmouth’s Alexa Dlouhy finished just 0.29 seconds behind her and Plymouth State University’s Freydis Halla Einarsdottir finished in third, 0.68 seconds back.

Moltzan is coming off a five-year stint with the U.S. Ski Team and was very happy with her first win in the EISA. She said that the transition from the national team is a great change of pace. Skiing on the college circuit comes with a new type of atmosphere as well as different forms of pressure that most skiers aren’t used to, and Moltzan is not immune to them.

“This isn’t just me anymore,” she said. “This is for my whole team. To be able to pull out the win and for myself is pretty awesome.”

Moltzan said that she generally doesn’t excel in the types of conditions that she skied in on Saturday, and after the first run, she sat off of the podium in fourth place.

“I realized second run that I really have to attack or else this is not going to end up how I want it to be,” she said, “I didn’t cross block that many gates second run, but I definitely sent it and I am pretty stoked with my win today.”

Kelly Moore and Meg Currie of Dartmouth finished just off the podium in fourth and fifth place, helping Big Green take a more decisive win. Dartmouth finished the weekend with 965 points followed by the University of Vermont with 837 points. University of New Hampshire held onto the third place slot with 650 points.

For complete results click here.

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About the Author: Chris Keating

Chris Keating grew up in Vermont and skied at Boston College where he served as captain during his senior year. He is currently a staff writer at The Valley Reporter in Waitsfield, Vt., and will be covering the NCAA and NorAm circuits for SkiRacing.com this winter.