GREENWOOD — The cooperative Alpine ski team of Falmouth and Waynflete, formed before this season, is still searching for an identity.
“I don’t think anyone’s decided on a formal name yet,” said longtime Falmouth Alpine coach Tip Kimball, “because this is all new territory.”
The Flying Yachtsmen, Kimball said, seems to be the top choice.
Here’s another name: Class A state girls’ Alpine champions.
Falmouth seniors Krysia Lesniak and Alex Shapiro finished fourth and fifth in slalom Thursday afternoon at icy Mt. Abram to lead the way to a 77-166 victory over runner-up Cape Elizabeth. Waynflete junior Kelley Frumer was 13th and Falmouth junior Audrey Morin 17th to give the, uh, Flying Yachtsmen a slalom score of 41 to go along with Wednesday’s giant slalom total of 38, which put Kimball’s girls in the driver’s seat.
Edward Little, led by individual slalom winner Brooke Lever, was third at 173 with Greely fourth at 176.
Lever won the individual title with a two-run time of 1 minute, 16.84 seconds – more than two seconds faster than runner-up Emma Simon of Watershed School of Camden.
Cape Elizabeth senior Emma Dvorozniak was third in 1:18.85.
“Not really ideal,” Dvorozniak said of Thursday’s conditions, two days after rain delayed the meet’s opening event. “It’s very icy. So unless your skis are razor blades, you’re going to have a little bit of trouble.”
Edward Little sophomore Maxx Bell won the boys’ individual title in 1:06.41 with Greely junior Axel Lindsay second in 1:09.32 – five-hundredths of a second ahead of third-place Ryland Van Decker, a junior from Oxford Hills.
The Eddies edged Mt. Blue for the Alpine team title, 116-120. Cape Elizabeth was third at 138 followed by Presque Isle (240) and Falmouth (261) and eight other schools.
“Because we were trying to get the title this year for Falmouth, we kind of had to not go all out,” said Shapiro, who won Wednesday’s giant slalom race. “(Kimball) told us, ‘Don’t give away the farm. Just have a good, solid run.’ It’s hard in these conditions.”
Tuesday’s rain coupled with a rapid temperature drop left the Boris Badenov trail with a coating of ice.
“Probably the conditions were well beyond the abilities of a good percentage of the boys and girls here,” Kimball said of the 200-plus competitors who took on the challenge Thursday. “But in ski racing, you can’t just put it in coast mode.”
“When you’ve got a course with a steep pitch and that hard surface, if you’re not attacking, there’s a good chance you’re going to not make it,” he said. “So they have to find that fine balance between attacking and skiing conservatively.”
Lesniak, who won the 2015 Class A slalom title, said the ice was a challenge rarely seen this season, but familiar to any long-time New England skier.
“We really focused on getting the ski out from under your body, putting it on edge early and just arcing it around and getting the bite in the ice as much as you can,” she said. “But it is tough. It’s kind of the person with the least-ugly run who wins.”
This winter’s championships are the first since the Maine Principals’ Association voted last year to create separate Alpine and Nordic championships in skiing.
Last year Falmouth competed at the state meet with only two boys and five girls. There was talk, Kimball said, of shuttering the program.
That’s when the athletic directors of the schools got together and applied to the MPA for a co-op team, which made sense given that for years, Waynflete skiers have trained with Falmouth.
This season’s roster of 11 boys and eight girls included three of each from Waynflete and the rest from Falmouth.
“We had a very deep team this year,” Lesniak said. “It was exciting to work with Waynflete.”
Exciting, and rewarding. Now all they need is a name.
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