February 6, 2023 at 9:00 a.m.
Slalom hinders Hodag Alpine at Granite Peak race
Slalom hinders Hodag Alpine at Granite Peak race
That was the only blemish in an otherwise strong individual day for the Hodag skiers and snowboarders. Though Rhinelander finished fifth with a short-handed squad in girls' skiing, senior Tommie Jo Springer locked up the individual Northern Conference title with her third overall win of the season. The Hodags also finished 1-2 in both boys' and girls' snowboarding on the day.
The Hodag boys were behind the 8-ball early on Thursday. With only two clean runs out of their six in slalom, the Hodags dug a 15-point hole to Wausau and could not make up ground later in the day during giant slalom or Super G.
"We started off the morning real rough in slalom," coach Rod Olson said. "We need to be running that event perfectly to do well. Without that, I think we caught up in GS a little bit and in Super G more, but it wasn't going to be enough to overcome that slalom score."
Brandon Bacon and Jason Linn were the only two Hodag skiers to get out of the event relatively unscathed. Bacon finished sixth in slalom and then added fifth-place runs in giant slalom and Super G to finish fourth overall on the day. Linn's best finish of the day was a third in slalom as he came home seventh overall.
Freshman Ben Olson straddled a gate just after the base of head wall in slalom and had to hike backup to it to avoid disqualification. He ended up finishing 20th in that race. While he took fourth in both giant slalom and Super G, he was able to rally to only ninth place overall.
Lukas Bishop finished 11th overall, Brody Kowieski was 15th and Riley Zarm finished 17th for the Hodags. Both Bishop and Zarm were forced to hike during their slalom runs.
"We're really going to focus this week's practice on slalom and just finding some keys there," coach Olson said. "That's been our nemesis. So we're going to have to fight through that to hang on to what we're doing in the conference and have any kind of shot at state. The slalom had just gotta work."
Even Springer was off, by her lofty standards, in slalom. Independent skier Grace Herrle edged her by 0.07 seconds for the win in that event, but Springer came back to win both giant slalom and Super G by more than a second.
With the Northern Conference factoring in a skier's three best races for the final conference standings, and Springer already having three wins to her credit in the five-race season, the Northland Pines senior locked up her third career Northern Conference championship. She also won the individual title in 2020 and 2021 before missing last season due to a knee injury.
The Hodags were short-handed on Thursday with only three girls skiing on varsity. Callie Horechler took 11th overall on the day, highlighted by an 11th place run in Super G. Maddie Ewan was 19th overall.
"We had some girls sick, some girls injured, so we weren't skiing at full force," coach Olson said. "Tommie Jo did good. She skied sick as well and held back quite a bit, but she did her usual performance as far as placement."
The conference's snowboarders ended up getting in four runs of boardercross on one of Granite Peak's terrain areas. The course seemed to suit the Hodags well as they scored four out of the top five finishes on the boys' side, and swept the top two positions on the girls' side.
Max Durkee and Nicole Long scored clean sweeps - winning all four runs in the boys' and girls' events, respectively. Owen Repenchek finished second in three of the four runs to finish second overall on the boys' side. Isaiah Willoughby took fourth, Isaac Mickevicius was fifth and William Gregersen was eighth.
Long dominated all four runs, winning three of them by more than four seconds. She beat teammate Sydney Sarkauskas in three of the four runs and Ashwabay's Lahala Mika in the other to earn her clean sweep. Sarkauskas finished second on the day.
"Boarders had a boardercross day on a course that turned out to be OK," coach Olson said. "It was cold, but they got four runs in, so they had fun. I talked to most of them about their day and they did well and the results there are typically for where they've been placing."
Cold and windy were the buzzwords of the day as the wind chill began to dip below zero by late afternoon. Though the result was fast, icy conditions, the cold and wind presented their own challenges.
"You try to do your best to stay warmed up, but you might sit too long and you warmup's ineffective," coach Olson said. "You can only stretch and do so much before you start to tire just to stay warm. Calorie intake on these days is tough. You need them, but with the constant in and out and inspection and being outside, it's not your normal day of eating. The wind, if you're a bigger kid, it really hurts you. It was coming up the hill at about a 30-degree angle and there were gusts and the gust can affect one person and not the next one.
"Mentally, no one complained. It's just part of the sport. The snow was great. That's the benefit when it's this cold, the snow is awesome. It's almost like snowmobile racing - the equipment runs better when it's this cold."
The Hodags have two races this week to round out the Northern Conference season. The team will be at Christie Mt. in Bruce today to make up the second round of the schedule, which was postponed Jan. 16 due to icy roads. The conference season concludes this Saturday as the Hodags host the finale at Ski Brule in Iron River, Mich.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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