Competitive Skiing vs BSL SL Championships

Score/Result: 5th

Slalom Championships

Following New England’s, Taft Ski Team finished their season with the BSL slalom championships at Sundown.  Over the course of the season, the team has shown that it is a stronger slalom team than GS team.  Already in second place for the BSL championships, Taft was looking to catch the Berkshire boys.  However, the team took a blow when Sarah Reilly ‘14, the girls New England slalom champion, was too sick to race.  This automatically meant that someone from outside of the normal top five would need to score for Taft at this race.  Nevertheless, the team was still hopeful as the race began. 

When MacGregor Peterson, brother of the co-captains and rhino hopeful of ’19, raced the course as a forerunner, the team could tell the ice and sharp turns in the course would make the race very challenging.  With that, the team decided that everyone should race the course cautiously.  That is, except for Eli Cooper ’15.  Eli, as usual, came away with first place overall.  But this time, the sophomore’s dominance was more evident as the second place finisher would finish almost seven full seconds behind Eli in the combined score!  However, unlike in past races, Henry Conlon ’15, who impressively wore a giraffe costume in a race the Friday before, was not right behind Eli, but instead could not finish either runs.  As anyone could imagine, lacking both Henry and Sarah’s scores would be too much to overcome, but the team still managed to take 5^th place in this race thanks to the performance of other racers.  Kramer Peterson ’13 managed to complete his long stint with the Taft Ski Team with two relatively clean runs considering the course, and took 15^th place overall.  However, Kramer’s performance would not be enough to hold his sister and co-captain Karlea Peterson ’14.  Just like in past years, Karlea has improved considerably since the beginning of January, especially in slalom.  In this last race, Karlea was finally able to defeat her brother in the first run with almost a second to spare, and (after a re-run) only lost to Kramer by 0.04 seconds in the second run.  Hence, Karlea outraced her brother to a very impressive 13^th overall finish. 

            Although Taft still needed two more times to for the team scoring, it was very nice to see Kim Amelsberg ’16 bounce back from her DNF last week to be a solid fourth time for the team.  Kim managed to stay in the course on both runs and garnered 30^th place overall out of the 86 total racers.  Kim has proved that she can provide the team with solid scores, and she should only build on the success of her freshman year.  Natalie Whiting ’14 finally was able to race in a varsity slalom race, and showed some skill that has been missed for much of this season as she finished the first run in 39^th place as the team’s fifth time.  However, Natalie ejected from her ski in the second run, and had trouble putting the ski back on.  Oddly enough, Natalie’s situation was a common occurrence at this race.  Becky Frank ’15 gave us our fifth time in the second run with a 60^th place finish, but did not finish her first run.  In her last race for Taft, Liz Veillette ’13 fittingly finished both of her runs and was rewarded with 53^rd overall.

            With that, the Taft Ski season comes to a close.  Although the team is extremely talented, it is also very young and will be returning eight of the ten racers who had raced varsity this year.  The two varsity seniors, Kramer Peterson and Liz Veillette, leave very happy with how the team has gone from a laughing stock into something extraordinary.  Only better days are to come for the Taft Ski Team.