Bromfield’s girls Alpine ski team cinched its first win of the season Jan. 28, beating Groton-Dunstable Regional High School 427-376. Meanwhile, the boys team showed off its depth and maintained it’s undefeated status in head-to-head matchups by beating Groton-Dunstable 445-240, despite having three top performers disqualified.
Thursday’s event was the first slalom race of the season and was scored differently from the previous two grand slaloms. Typically, each team is allowed 12 skiers, with six designated varsity and six junior varsity. Only the top five varsity skiers can score. This week each team was allowed eight skiers but any five could contribute varsity points.
Bromfield skiers scored against Groton-Dunstable, but places represent each athlete’s standing against skiers from the entire Mass Bay West Ski League’s alpha division. This includes teams from Acton-Boxborough, Chelmsford, Newton South, and Westford Academy, as well as Bromfield and Groton-Dunstable.
The girls finished six skiers ahead of Groton-Dunstable’s second to secure a 51-point victory and the third-highest score in the league behind Newton South High School (428) and Acton-Boxborough Regional High School (476).
The team was led, for the third week in a row, by sophomore captain Imogen Slavin, who finished 11th in the league and first in the matchup against Groton-Dunstable with a time of 34.48 seconds. Freshman Maddie Rausch (39.01) and seventh-grader Audrey Slavin (39.88), each competing in their first high school slalom race, followed in 14th and 16th place respectively.
Junior Ashley Regan (41.29) put up a personal best finish of 18th place, and eighth-grader Nina Iverson’s first high school slalom finish in 49.15 earned her 19th to close out the team’s scoring.
Three more skiers from the Bromfield team hit the slopes for their first high school slalom race. Seventh-grader Libby Bassage (42.68) was 20th, sophomore Siena Stanten (44.63) was 28th, and freshman Annie Ivanov (49.98) wrapped things up in 42nd.
The boys team had its training put to the test Thursday after three skiers, each of whom put up varsity points in at least one of the team’s prior races, slid out and were disqualified. That left five skiers—the exact number needed for a full team score—to carry the day.
Luckily for Bromfield, the new method of scoring allowed all five to contribute varsity points and the team’s depth showed through. Sophomore Noah Bagley (29.77) finished in third, followed by senior Gavin Maddalone (32.60) in sixth, and freshman Oscar Pride (32.97) three-tenths of a second behind in seventh, all before Groton-Dunstable’s first skier.
Seniors Townsend Southard Pantano (36.07) and Ben Brown (40.12) stepped up for their first varsity starts, finishing 17th and 27th respectively.
Coach Ray McCarthy said that despite being one of the last teams on the course Thursday, conditions were decent. He chalks up the high number of disqualifications to technical errors by the skiers. “It was unfortunate only because the [three] racers who [were disqualified] have all been skiing so well in training and successfully finishing such a high percentage of their training runs,” he wrote in an email to the Press.
“But we’re all human and we all make mistakes and [disqualifications] are and will remain a part of ski racing. … As racers we try to learn from our mistakes, then put them behind us and focus on what we’ll do differently next time.”
While the Groton-Dunstable boys had only four skiers and finished three due to a disqualification, Bromfield’s 445 points represents a strong performance. For the third week in a row, the boys had the second-highest score in the league, behind Westford Academy’s 454.
The Bromfield ski teams will race again Feb. 5 in a tri-meet slalom against Westford Academy and Chelmsford High School.
