LAKE PLACID, N.Y., - In the last day of the 2015 EISA carnival circuit, the Williams ski teams delivered some of their best performances of the season.

 

The Alpine men, for instance, put three skiers in the top twenty, as did the Nordic men and women, while the Alpine women were led in one final race by senior Sarah Cottrill who again skied in the top twenty.

 

Cottrill, who skied the slalom course, in times of 58.09 seconds and :59.85 for an elapsed time of 1:57.94, was within about five seconds of leader Elli Terwiel of UVM and was the major factor allowing the Eph Alpine women to take ninth for the day. Sophomore Gabrielle Markel was the next Williams finisher in 40th place, with an overall time of 2 minutes 4.61 seconds and Makena Jones was 44th in 2 minutes 7.29 seconds.

 

Senior Carson Houle of the men's Alpine team, clocked in his slalom first run in an impressive :56.08, the 10th fastest in the field. His second run of :57.58 was 18th in the field and enough to place him in 13th overall with a total time of 1:53.66. Houle's total time was less than a second out of eighth and less than four seconds from William St-Germain of UVM who won the race in 1:50.61.

 

The Williams Nordic women finished sixth after racing the 15-kilometer mass start classic race. The women's team was led by sophomore Hannah Cole, who will be representing Williams for the second consecutive year at the NCAA championships. Cole came in 12th in 55 minutes, 37.0 seconds, about 2:30 behind UHN's Annika Taylor who won in 53:10.08.

 

The men, who skied a 20-kilometer version of the race, also put three skiers in the top 20 and four in the top 30, ensuring they retained their commanding third place team score. Senior Will Wicherski was the first of the Ephs to cross the finish line, coming in 13th with a time of 1:02:01.1, a full 4 and a half minutes back from leader Patrick Caldwell of Dartmouth who, seeming to be in a race of his own, beat second place UVM's Joergen Grav by about 2:20.

 

While the carnival racing for the season is all wrapped up, a few of our ski team Ephs will be returning to Lake Placid and competing to do at the NCAA national championships. These events will occur on the week of March 15; with the Nordic events on Wednesday and Friday and the Alpine races on Thursday and Saturday.

Representing Williams along with senior Christoph Lentz for men's Alpine, will be sophomores Hannah Cole and Eli Hoenig and senior Will Wicherski for Nordic skiing. These four have earned their spots through races that consistently ranked them in the top of their fields in the East.