cato winners: During the post-race dinner and awards ceremony, Lucy McLean and Austin Keillor, both seniors, pose with a Gnome painted with the UO logo in honor of the Ducks’ Rose Bowl appearance the same days as the race. As is tradition with the race, teams wear costumes, and HRV’s theme was garden gnomes.
cato winners: During the post-race dinner and awards ceremony, Lucy McLean and Austin Keillor, both seniors, pose with a Gnome painted with the UO logo in honor of the Ducks’ Rose Bowl appearance the same days as the race. As is tradition with the race, teams wear costumes, and HRV’s theme was garden gnomes.
Lucy McLean successfully defended her (unofficial) title as “Queen of the Cato Race” Saturday at Timberline Lodge, where the Hood River Valley High School senior blew away the competition to win the varsity girls race for a fourth consecutive year. Also defending his title, senior Austin Keillor posted the fastest time of the day to win the varsity boys race for his second year.
The annual Christine Cato Memorial Race is held at the beginning of each year to kick off the Oregon high school racing season, and although focused around fun, team building and school spirit, the event is also a good way of sizing up competition from the state’s seven alpine leagues, most of which won’t meet again until the state championships in March.
Varsity boys: 2nd overall, total time 1:13.90 (1st was West Linn, 1:12.71)
After a full day of slalom racing, the Eagles finished runner-up in overall boys and girls categories; the boys were just barely edged by West Linn and the girls by Lakeridge for team titles.
“Great conditions, great weather, a great course and a great race,” coach Scott Keillor said in summary. “This was the final Cato race. It’s been a great event to be a part of and I hope they replace it with something.”
After 25 consecutive years, this was the last of a legacy started in 1990, in memory of Christine Cato, a young ski racer from Beaverton who died at Timberline in the summer of 1989, just before her senior year of high school. Although still a race, the “fun” aspect of the event is stressed. Teams are awarded with prizes for most spirit and costumes are judged prior to the race, with many racers electing to keep their costumes on as they fly down the hill. HRV’s theme was garden gnomes, which they sported with white bandanas and colorful, pointy caps.
On a more serious side, Keillor and McLean return to the slopes for their final year of high school racing as favorites to dominate Mt. Hood League and state competition. Both racers finished as individual league champions in slalom and GS last season, and both are out for revenge after untimely falls at state that kept them off the podium.
Not far off Keillor’s 21.54 pace was William Lamer, who returns to the varsity boys’ No. 2 slot as last year’s top state finisher (3rd combined, 4th slalom, 10th GS) and will likely keep Keillor in check as the season progresses. Lamer’s time of 23.61 was good enough for third place; he was followed by Oskar Anderson in 33rd, Tucker Fitz Simons in 45th and Charlie Sutherland in 56th to round out the boys’ top five finishers.
McLean’s run of 33.90 was two full seconds faster than the next-best finisher, Isabella Hoffman of Lakeridge. Behind McLean were Sarah Hall in 13th, Hannah Bergemann in 29th and Savannah Boersma in 57th. Kelli Clark, who was runner up to McLean in overall league standings last season and led the team at state with an 8th place combined finish, had a mishap at the bottom of the course and had to hike back to a missed gate. The lost time put her toward the bottom of the standings in 80th.
Another highlight of the day, the JV boys team took first, led by freshman Mitchell Lamer who won the race with a time of 30.64. The JV girls were third, with Claire Davies leading the team in 10th.
The Eagles return to league action this weekend, with slalom Friday and giant slalom Saturday at Mt. Hood Meadows. As a perennial powerhouse in the league, skiers from the Cleveland, Grant, Gresham, Barlow, Sandy, St. Mary’s and The Dalles will once again have their work cut out for them as they chase the fastest skiers on Mt. Hood for the next few months.
Freestyle skiers get their start to the season Friday as well, with a slopestyle contest at Meadows’ terrain park. Expected to dominate again this season, HRV’s freestyle ski team has established itself as the trail-blazer in the developing sport of high school freestyle (slopestyle, halfpipe, rail jam and skier cross) competition. The Eagles claimed league and state titles in every freestyle event last season and among the standouts back on the lineup are returning state champions Bergemann (overall, skiercross, slopestyle and rail jam), Tucker Fitz Simons (overall, rail jam and slopestyle) and Partick Crompton (skiercross). Bergemann, a senior, finished her 2013-2014 season in Copper Mountain, Colo., where she won USASA freeskiing national titles in her division in slopestyle, halfpipe and rail jam events.
In all, coach Keillor says he has a bigger, better team to work with this season, so he expects good things both at the league and state level.
“We have 46 kids this year,” he said. “There’s a healthy amount of competition at the top level and I would expect to see several of our athletes right up there.”
He said the low snowpack and late opening to the season did have an effect on his athletes, but that there’s still plenty of time to get proper training in before league and state championships.
The team competes at Meadows for most of the season, with a few races scheduled for Ski Bowl, assuming there’s enough snow. Both alpine and freestyle state championships are at also Meadows this season (March 4-6).
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