HOOD RIVER — On a ski lift with a celestial theme and ski runs to match, Hood River Valley (HRV) captured the girls team and combined girls and boys team Oregon state high school alpine championships on Friday, March 6, at Mt. Hood Meadows.
The Shooting Star lift was the canvas that the HRV teams painted another dramatic and vibrant portrait. The Eagle girls won its 13th championship since girls teams were awarded their own trophy in 1969. Ironically, 1969 was the same year that the first person walked on the moon.
Hood River Valley’s girls rivalry with Bend High School (11 championships) was renewed; this year, Jesuit High School joined the fray. Summit High School of Bend also played a key role in the final results.
The girls 32-gate giant slalom race on runs called Shooting Star Ridge to Apollo set the tone for the HRV championship run. The course was described as lyrical for the first 22 paneled gates before a crescendo, worthy of Pink Floyd, down the double black diamond Apollo run.
On March 5, senior Rowan McKenna led the Eagle girls with her third-place finish. All five racers for HRV finished in the top 35 of the 98 skiers from 17 different high schools, plus 26 individual qualifiers. High school alpine racing requires three counting times each run to get a team result.
The HRV girls had three top-12 finishes. Sophomore Arlie Sparling finished fifth, and senior Zoe Mortensen finished 12th. The only blemish on HRV girls’ resumé was the second run of the giant slalom when Summit had a combined time less than a second faster. The Hood River Valley girls had built up an 11-second margin, though, after the first run.
The Jesuit girls finished second in the giant slalom, seven seconds behind, and Summit was third.
A day later, it was the girls slalom on a run named Gemini Friday that provided the drama. Again, Summit High School played a pivotal role in the outcome. Bailey Atkin, the Storm’s first-seeded skier, had the fastest time, along with the Bend schools’ second and third times, which were right behind the HRV girls.
The second run would be significant in a couple of ways. The 43-gate slalom course begins on a rather steep vertical before a benign slope where the course setter put a two-gate hairpin into a three-gate flush. This would be the undoing of Atkin and HRV’s Mortensen, among others.
Senior Eliotte Walsh reenacted her heroics at last year’s championships at Mt. Ashland by providing the third counting time to help Hood River win the girls slalom by a razor thin, 0.59-second margin over Jesuit. McKenna and Sparling finished sixth and 12th, respectively.
Sophomore Rosina Hart finished 20th in her first run. Bend High School finished third, nine seconds back.
When the times were tabulated for the giant slalom and slalom, HRV won the Halton-Papé Cup, the two-foot-high, silver-loving perpetual trophy, for the second year in a row by 7.5 seconds over Jesuit and 20 seconds over their 56-year rival, the Lava Bears.
The HRV boys were not without their own heroes. To win the Bill Healy Cup, the combined trophy, both the girls and boys teams times are tabulated. HRV’s boys results from Thursday’s slalom on the Gemini slope left the Eagles in seventh place behind leader Lincoln of Portland and others. Senior Lars Welch was fourth after the first run of 108 competitors. Sophomore Harrison Kunkler’s combined two-run times placed him 11th overall. Sophomore Beckett Eaton’s first run provided the team with a third counting time.
The hero for Hood River arguably was senior Jess Aubert, who provided a third counting time in Thursday’s second run of the slalom and followed it with a counting time on the demanding Apollo run on Friday. Hood River boys finished fifth. Welch skied what he called “a conservative race” in the giant slalom to finish 15th. The boy’s giant slalom result was critical to helping the team win the Healy Cup on the 30th anniversary of the 1996 HRV team, written up in a Ski Magazine article, and for the 12th time since its inception in 1978.
“I’m just very proud of the hard work and dedication of the kids and coaches through a challenging snow year,” Sean Mailey, Hood River athletic director and a former ski coach himself, said. “They kept their focus and worked as a team at state to bring home the state championship.”
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