Sports

Skiers go in circles to decide CIC cross-country championships

Usually the skiers who triumph on the first day of the Cook Inlet Conference championships are in the driver's seat for the Skimeister title awarded Saturday.

But this year, at least one and possibly both of Friday's winners will give up the driver's seat for a seat on an airplane, leaving the coveted Skimeister crown up for grabs.

Service sophomore Gus Schumacher and West High sophomore Molly Gellert, the winners of Friday's freestyle races at Kincaid Park, are scheduled to fly to Europe late Saturday night.

Both are headed to Estonia for the Nation's Cup race series for skiers 18 and younger. They earned spots on the 12-member American team with their results at the U.S. National Championships earlier this year in Michigan.

Schumacher said he'll skip Saturday's relay race rather than exhaust himself before flying to his first international ski competition.

"It's tough, because I don't want to leave my teammates," he said.

Gellert said she wasn't sure if she'll race Saturday, although she sounded likely to sit it out.

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"I might just come out and cheer," she said.

Gellert said she will consider skipping the relay "to save my legs, because I'll be sitting on a flight for a long time."

Plus, Gellert has been sick recently, so "it might not be the best thing to go all out" in a race just hours before beginning an overseas journey, she said.

With Schumacher out, the boys Skimeister could come down to a battle between West's Luke Jager and Service's Canyon Tobin.

Schumacher won Friday's 10-kilometer boys race in 21 minutes, 30.1 seconds, finishing 18.1 seconds ahead of second-place Jager and 26.3 seconds ahead of third-place Tobin.

That means 8.2 seconds separate Jager and Tobin going into the classic-technique relay, in which each boy will race 3.9 kilometers and each girl will race 3.1 kilometers.

While the Skimeister race may be close among the boys, the team race may not. West, which is seeking its first CIC championship since 2006, took a huge advantage over everyone else by placing six skiers in the top 11, a group led by Jager and fourth-place Sam York.

Gellert won the girls 7-K race in 18:37.1, beating Service's Emma Tarbath by 10.6 seconds. West's Magdalen York was third, 18.5 seconds behind Gellert and 7.9 seconds behind Tarbath.

"Molly's a great skier, and if she's here or not, I'll go as hard as I can," Tarbath said. "I'll go for the gold."

Led by Gellert and York, West landed four girls in the top 15 and seven in the top 21.

Every bit as powerful were the Chugiak girls, who placed five in the top 13.

The West girls are the defending CIC champions, but Chugiak hasn't won a CIC title since 2009. Even so, there was nothing surprising about the impressive showing by the Mustangs.

"I think it was expected, because we all worked super hard this summer, which definitely improved us," sophomore Heidi Booher said. "We're all super stoked."

But don't expect a similar show of force from the Mustangs on Saturday.

Booher, who placed fourth Friday, said most of Chugiak's top girls will skip the relay. Instead they'll help test waxes and maybe ski the open race for fun.

Why not race? Because there's a lot of high-caliber races coming up for Alaska's top high school skiers.

This weekend is the first of four consecutive weekends of important competitions, and the stakes get bigger every week.

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Next week is the three-day state championships at Kincaid Park. The week after marks the beginning of the March 6-13 Junior National championships in Wisconsin.

Ordinarily there's a week-long break between the state championships and the national championships, but not this year, so skiers are mindful about pacing themselves.

That they are racing at all is somewhat of an upset.

Snow has been little more than a rumor this winter in Anchorage, but thanks to snow-making equipment at Kincaid, the high school season was salvaged.

"We're actually super lucky. … They're making a lot out of nothing," Gellert said of the snowmaking and grooming efforts.

Enough snow has been made to create a couple of short loops. On Friday, the boys skied three times around a loop of about 3.1 kilometers and girls skied twice around a loop of about 3.5 kilometers.

They've been going around in circles like that all season, but they don't seem to mind. York put the ultimate positive spin on things:

"It's not bad," she said, "because we can go different ways — we can ski clockwise, we can ski counterclockwise." Adding even more variety is a short loop near the soccer fields, she said.

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Most skiers agreed that the best part about racing multiple laps on a short loop is the chance to see most of your teammates along the way.

"On a one-lap course you only see a couple of people," Schumacher said. "It's nice to see people you wouldn't ordinarily see in races. You can cheer them on."

Plus, Jager said, you never go very far without seeing a coach or a spectator.

"People are everywhere if you break a pole or something," he said.

After checking out some of Kincaid's other trails before his race, Jager said he had an increased appreciation of the ribbon of man-made snow being used for the CIC races.

"I went out and warmed up on rock skis," he said. "It was a lot of grass. It was rough."

Cook Inlet Conference cross-country ski championships

Kincaid Park

Boys 9.4-kilometer freestyle

1) Gus Schumacher, Service, 21:30.1; 2) Luke Jager, West, 21:48.2; 21:48.2; 3) Canyon Tobin, Service, 21:53.7; 4) Sam York, West, 22:27.7; 5) Hamish Wolfe, South, 22:38.9; 6) Matthew Hoefler, South, 22:57.9; 7) Zach Bassett, Service, 23:05.5; 8) Ryan Bickford, West, 23:10.5; 9) Tristan Wiese, West, 23:16.1; 10) Jack Consenstein, West, 23:27.6; 11) Garrett Alderman, West, 23:32.8; 12) Will Balcao, South, 23:39.1; 13) Roan Hall, South, 23:41.9; 14) Micah Barber, Dimond, 23:43.2; 15) Dax Cvancara, Dimond, 23:59.9; 16) Jack Wright, Dimond, 24:02.5; 17) Brian Wing, Chugiak, 24:05.2; 18) Chip Schoff, South, 24:09.7; 19) Andrew Hull, South, 24:10.5; 20) Kai Meyers, South, 24:12.9; 21) Grant Klug, South, 24:30.4; 22) Eli Hermenson, Service, 24.41.3; 23) Noah Ravens, West, 24:42.1; 24) Adam Blackley, Eagle River, 25:21.2; 25) George Cvancara, Dimond, 25:21.3; 26) Duncan Wright, Service, 25.23.7; 27) Ryan Brubaker, Service, 25.28.9; 28) Torsten Renner, Eagle River, 25:36.7; 29) Jack Ginter, Chugiak, 26:07.3; 30) Miles Dennis, Chugiak, 26:09.1; 31) Scott Morton, Dimond, 26:46.1; 32) Quinton Perham, Chugiak, 27:03.7; 33) Chris Fueg, Chugiak, 27:10.5; 34) Dasiell Robertson, Service, 27:20.9; 35) Braden Tobin, Eagle River, 27:49.8; 36) Nick Carl, Eagle River, 28:21.4; 37) James Anderson, Chugiak, 28:22.4; 38) Robert Magrath, Bartlett, 31:49.0; 39) Declan Reid, Bartlett, 32:31.2; 40) David Magrath, Bartlett, 33:25.2; 41) Jacob Obrigewitch, Bartlett, 33:37.0; 42) Andrew Lear, Bartlett, 41:34.7; 43) Mua Vang, Bartlett, 52:11.0.

Girls 7.0-kilometer freestyle

1) Molly Gellert, West, 18:37.1; 2) Emma Tarbath, Service, 18:47.7; 3) Magdalen York, West, 18:55.6; 4) Heidi Booher, Chugiak, 19:12.3; 5) Alejandra Legate, West, 19:21.0; 6) Clare Cook, Chugiak, 19:21.6; 7) Naomi Kiekintveld, South, 19:23.8; 8) Ryan Terry, Service, 19:39.4; 9) Emma Nelson, Chugiak, 19:55.3; 10) Maggie Meeds, South, 19:56.7; 11) Hannah Booher, Chugiak, 19:59.3; 12) Kinsey Denton, Dimond, 20:13.5; 13) Emma Sees, Chugiak, 20:16.1; 14) Helen Wilson, Eagle River, 20:16.5; 15) Aubrey Leclair, West, 20:20.1; 16) Annie Gonzales, East, 20:21.4; 17) Ruth Cvancara, Dimond, 20:22.9; 18) Avery Mozen, West, 20:23.1; 19) Elizabeth Mans, West, 20:26.4; 20) Jenni Grunblatt, South, 20:40.6; 21) Fiona Fick, West, 20:55.9; 22) Grace Gilliland, Chugiak, 21:00.3; 23) Sarah Freeman, East, 21:01.9; 24) Liesel Von Imhof, Dimond, 21:18.3; 25) Kaylee Heck, South, 21:56.2; 26) Caitlin Gohr, Service, 21:56.9; 27) Reilly Hall, Chugiak, 22:00.5; 28) Julia Ditto, Service, 22:02.0; 29) Nadia Dworian, Service, 22:08.3; 30) Sadie Oswald, South, 22:15.3; 31) Annie Connelly, Eagle River, 22:31.1; 32) Savannah Ulrich, South, 22:33.0; 33) Alice Michaelson, South, 22:37.4; 34) Ally Carney, Dimond, 23:00.8; 35) Summer Frazier, Eagle River, 23:06.8; 36) Ariana O'Harra, East, 23:15.6; 37) Grace Trimborn, Service, 23:24.0; 38) Rachel Shick, East, 23:33.1; 39) Amanda Moore, Service, 23:34.4; 40) Jasmine Langmann, Dimond, 23:35.7; 41) Myah Smith, Eagle River, 23:58.0; 42) Cora Berbig, Dimond, 24:06.8; 43) Mary Robicheaux, East, 24:14.7; 44) Sarah Tucker, Bartlett, 26:43.0; 45) Carolyn Pype, Bartlett, 28:57.5; 46) Cheyenne Bolan, Bartlett, 44:20.5.

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