Eastern Cup Recap

Happy Holidays!

Here's a quick recap of the Eastern Cup races this week at Sunday River (Women) and Sugarloaf (Men)

Women's Results
Men's Results

Women

Day 1 - SL
Katie Fitzpatrick took the win by a slim margin of .09 over Annie Rendall from Dartmouth.  Avril Dunleavy completed the podium in 3rd only .15 out of 1st. Anne Rockwell and Emily Hayes also had strong days finishing 6th and 12th.

Day 2 - SL

The second SL started off strong with Katie and Avril 1st and 3rd after the first run and Emily Hayes in 7th.  Unfortunately Katie and Avril were second run DNFs but Emily skied very well to move into 3rd. Emily's result put Bates on the podium in all four eastern FIS slaloms this year (8 out of 12 possible podium positions).

Day 3 - GS

The third day brought us the first GS of the year in the east.  While we've been lucky to have great slalom training for the past six weeks our gs training has been limited since returning from Mammoth.  Avril had the best result of the day for the team finishing 5th, just a a tenth of a second off the podium.

Day 4 - GS

This was the last day of racing before a well deserved break for the women. A change in the weather brought some tough conditions, but the Sunday River race crew did a great job with the hill. Anne Rockwell was our only finisher on the day but had a great result finishing in 11th.  Avril had a great first run to take the lead but was caught out by the super slick conditions that took out most of the top finishers from the first run.

Men

Day 1 - SL

Bump Heldman led off the men's Eastern Cup series with a win.  Alex Jones also had a strong finish in 7th.

Alex Jones - Photo courtesy of Cory Ransom

Day 2 and 3 - SL and GS

A tough two days for the Bobcats.  Stefan Lyons was the top SL finisher in 40th and Matt Perejda was the top GS finisher in 45th.  

Day 4  - GS Cancelled.

FIS Slaloms at Sunday River. A Great Start to the season!

Day 1


Saturday was the beginning of the race season for the majority of the team and the women started off in dominant style with a sweep of the podium.  Katie Fitzpatrick '15 put down two great runs to take the win by almost a second over teammate Avril Dunleavy '15.  Zoe Livingston '13 had a great second run to move from 8th to 3rd, to round out the podium.  Emily Hayes '15 also had a solid day finishing 7th.

On the men's side it was a bit tougher of a day as Bump Heldman '12 and Alex Jones '12 had issues on their 1st and 2nd runs respectively, but Coleman Lieb had a strong day moving from the 64th start position to 18th on the day.

Day 2


On Sunday the duo of Avril and Katie continued their strong skiing.  This time Avril took the win by a margin of 2.1 seconds over Katie to take the top two steps of the podium.  Anne Rockwell '14 rebounded from a disappointing DNF in the second run on Saturday to finish a strong 5th. Zoe added another top-10 result, finishing 9th on the day.

The men had a slightly better day on Sunday.  Bump sat 10th after the 1st run despite a dubious decision to race on skis he hadn't skied on yet.  Second run he switched back to a pair of skis that he was comfortable on and put down a stellar run to win the run and move up to 3rd.  Alex struggled on the second run dropping back a few positions to 16th which was still a respectable early season result against a strong field.  Coleman continued his attack from the back moving from the 65th start position to 18th.

Results can be found here.

Day 1 Podium

Day 2 Podiums

Best Training in the East

Despite the 60 degree temps and occasional rain last week, we actually had a great week of training at Sunday River.  Thanks to Sunday River's early season snow making efforts and a thousand pounds of salt we had 3 days of SL on very firm snow.  Then it got cold. Now it feels like mid-winter on the hill and the training is even better. It's a nice advantage to have the only available training in the East at our home mountain.

One more week of training, then we start the season with 2 FIS slaloms for Men and Women at Sunday River.  After 5 weeks on snow the team is excited and eager to race.  Go Bobcats.


Training 11/30/11



Training 12/4/11 (A couple days of snow making makes a big difference!)