Rachel Tooth grew accustomed to bumpy ski seasons as a young girl, so when she and her Maranacook Alpine teammates encountered a big bump before this season got out of the gate, Tooth knew what to do.
It wasn’t easy, even though Tooth had mastered treacherous terrain as a freestyle moguls skier from the time she was 8 years old. The bump she and the Black Bears had to handle was a big and painful one — a season-ending knee injury that Tooth’s co-captain, Erin Guilmet, suffered during their second practice on snow.
Losing Guilmet hit the Black Bears hard as a team, and Maranacook coach Ronn Gifford wondered how it would respond. Guilmet was not only the defending Class B slalom champion but also the emotional leader of a team that had high hopes for the season.
“To lose that, you really wonder what kind of void you’re going to have to fill. But Rachel, without me asking for it or directing her, just took over,” Gifford said.
Tooth played a leading role in the Maranacook girls finishing second in Class B and bringing home its first plaque in nearly a decade while establishing herself as one of the top giant slalom racers in the state. For her efforts, she is the Kennebec Journal Girls Alpine Skier of the Year.
Tooth, a junior, had never skied out of a gate before her freshman year at Maranacook. But she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her older brother, Alex, who took up Alpine at Maranacook and went on to help lead the boys team to a state title in 2014.
It took some time tor Tooth to adjust her rhythm from skiing moguls to skiing gates, which is kind of like a musician going from jazz to speed metal. But work with Gifford and assistant John Whitney got her in enough of a rhythm to finish 12th in the giant slalom her freshman year.
Tooth continued to improve through her sophomore year, although she couldn’t match the results at the state meet, and was looking forward to her junior year.
“I was coming to feel pretty confident with skiing and I was pretty excited to have Erin by my side for her senior year,” Tooth said. “I had been talking to Erin all year about it, and then she injured her knee and it was a sudden thing for me that I had to deal with. It put a lot of pressure on me because she was my co-captain and I knew I was going to have more of the leadership burden on me.”
A virtually unprecedented lack of time on snow due to the weather added to the burden. But as time passed, Tooth found she thrived under that pressure.
“I think it gave me more confidence in my skiing because I had to help my teammates and make sure they were doing things the right way,” she said.
Tooth simultaneously reinforced the right way of doing things for herself, and she started to build technical prowess to match her physical strength.
“Pound for pound, she’s one of the toughest kids on the hill,” Gifford said.
Still, she didn’t have a breakthrough in the results until the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference giant slalom championships at Black Mountain in Rumford. Trailing leader Audrey Heriz-Smith of Camden Hills by 1.05 seconds after the first run, she beat her by a second-and-a-half on their second run to take the conference title.
She kept the momentum going into the following week at the state meet at Black Mountain, winning the bronze medal. The individual glory was fine, but Tooth was still watching over her teammates.
“I think most of the girls skied their best at the end of the season. Jannika Pakulski stepped up so well at KVACs and states, which was really exciting,” she said. “Getting that (team) plaque for second place was the best moment all season.”
With the strong finish to the season (she also qualified for the state Alpine team), Tooth is optimistic she and the Black Bears will have more moments like that during next season. Her focus heading into next winter will be on becoming a more well-rounded skier.
“I definitely think stepping up in the slalom would be great,” she said. “Once I get that down pat, we’ll be pretty solid next year.”
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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