Mount Greylock Boys, Girls Cruise to Season-Opening Wins
WOODFORD, Vt. – The Mount Greylock girls and boys cross country ski teams easily placed first in the season-opening meet at Prospect Mountain on Saturday morning.
Second place, on the other hand, was a battle.
The Lenox girls edged Wahconah by one point to place second in the traditional New Year’s Eve lid-lifter. In the boys race, the Millionaires beat Wahconah by just three points.
Mount Greylock’s girls finished 17 points ahead of the field on the strength of a 1-2-3 finish from Anne Miller, Lauren Miller and Cornelia Swabey.
Quinn McDermott won the boys race to lead a pack of four Mounties in the top five. Ollie Swabey placed second, and Jude Bakija and Declan Rogers were fourth and fifth, respectively, to give Mount Greylock’s boys a comfortable 25-point cushion on field.
Everyone was happy to get the first race of the year in the books with little to no snow and unseasonably warm temperatures in the forecast for the first couple of weeks of 2023.
It took a lot of work by Prospect staff and volunteers to make the races possible. And a tight turn at the bottom of the base area gave a number of athletes trouble.
All in all, Mother Nature provided a challenge for everyone to end the year and start the season.
“It’s really, really slow today,” Ollie Swabey said. “It’s gone through a lot of freeze/thaw cycles, so it’s really mushy. It’s a really grindy course, and you have to really work to move at all.”
He said that the result of all that freezing and thawing was a course that did not favor anyone in particular.
“There’s a type of ski that’s supposed to go really fast in conditions like it was supposed to be if it hadn’t frozen overnight,” Swabey said. “But because it froze, it was pretty even. So it was really just a course of who could work the hardest”
Lenox’s skiers worked hard enough to be runner up in both team races.
Alice Culver and Medeja Rudzinskate led the girls with finishes in fourth and fifth, respectively.
They were followed by a trio of Wahconah racers: Vienna Mahar, Olivia Langenheim and Mars Rabuse.
The girls team race came down to the 10th-place showing for Lenox’s Jane Elliot, who gave the Millionaires just enough of a lift to get the one-point win.
Wahconah’s Fritz Sanders was the only non-Mountie in the top five on Saturday, placing third.
But Lenox placed four finishers in the top 13 to get the points it needed to beat out Wahconah for second place.
Finn Jolly and Ben Ames led the Millionaires, placing sixth and seventh. Sean Cestone (11th) and Ben Harwood (13th) rounded out the scoring for Lenox.
The Berkshire County league had one fewer team than usual competing on Saturday with Simsbury, Conn., choosing to sit this one out.
And Hoosac Valley, which had two racers competing as individuals in the season opener, got an 18th-place finish from David Scholz in the boys varsity race. Kim Mach placed third in the girls junior varsity race.
The league is scheduled to be back in action next Saturday at Mohawk Trail.
This story updated with corrected top three finishers in the girls race after a change in the scoring.
Girls Top 15
1. Anne Miller, MG, 18:29; 2. Lauren Miller, MG, 18:37; 3. Cornelia Swabey, MG, 18:57; 4. Alice Culver, L, 18:59; 5. Medeja Rudzinskate, L, 19:09; 6. Vienna Mahar, W, 19:36; 7. Olivia Langenheim, W, 20:24; 8. Mars Rabuse, W, 21:08; 9. Zoey Candito, A, 22:00; 10. Jane Elliot, L, 22:18; 11. Euphemia Skinner, MG, 22:55; 12. Elizabeth Sawicki, A, 23:06; 13. River Wolaver, A, 23:19; 14. Paige Trager, W, 23:40; 15. Hannah Alsdorf, L, 23:45.
Girls Team Scores
1. Mount Greylock, 17 points; 2. Lenox, 34 points; 3. Wahconah, 35 points; 4. Amherst, 51 points.
Boys Top 15
1. Quinn McDermott, MG, 14:22; 2. Oliver Swabey, MG, 14:41; 3. Fritz Sanders, W, 15:48; 4. Jude Bakija, MG, 16:06; 5. Declan Rogers, MG, 16:51; 6. Finn Jolly, L, 16:55; 7. Ben Ames, L, 16:57; 8. Nathan Gill, MG, 17:06; 9. Aidan Garcia, W, 17:15; 10. Patrick Holland, MG, 17:28; 11. Sean Cestone, L, 17:37; 12. Colby Robb, W, 17:46; 13. Ben Harwood, L, 18:02; 14. Jackson Carhart, L, 18:10; 15. Simon Shin, MG, 18:16.
Boys Team Scores
1. Mount Greylock, 12 points; 2. Lenox, 37 points; 3. Wahconah, 40 points; 4. Mohawk Trail, 82 points; 5. Amherst, 98 points.