Bend boys win, girls second as both clinch alpine ski titles

Published 11:21 pm Tuesday, March 6, 2018

MOUNT BACHELOR — Bend’s boys won Saturday’s giant slalom race to finish the Oregon School Ski Association season with a perfect 160 points, and the Bend girls won the team championship with 150 points despite finishing second to the Summit girls, the defending champions, at the eighth and final race of the year.

After beating Summit on a tiebreaker last March, the Lava Bears won all eight races this season. Summit finished second with 144 points. Mountain View was third with 126 points and Sisters fifth with 96.

“It was really exciting, it was different,” Bend assistant coach Erin Foley Levine said of sweeping all eight races. “Last year was amazing, because it came down to the last race. This year, we were a little more dominant.”

The Bend boys combined for a time of 6 minutes, 21.42 seconds on the giant slalom runs on Mt. Bachelor ski area’s Cliffhanger run, more than nine seconds faster than second-place Summit at 6:30.61. Mountain View was third in 6:35.35 and Sisters was fifth in 6:55.44. Oak Hill’s Kirill Myagkov recorded the fastest times in both the first and second runs for a combined time of 2:04.01. Bend’s Colt Musgrave was second overall with a combined time of 2:04.81 and was second in the first run. Summit’s Ty Zuber was fourth Saturday with a combined time of 2:07.02. Musgrave also won the boys combined overall title with 1,145 points, while Zuber was second with 1,025. Colt carried the slalom standings for the season, while Myagkov was the top racer in the giant slalom. Bend’s Giovanni Ricci was fifth in the combined season standings with 546 points, Summit’s Christian Kleinsmith was seventh at 479, and Mountain View’s Parker Hopfer was eighth with 436 points.

In addition to Musgrave and Ricci, Bend skiers Aaron Duarte, Reed Kellar, Jasper Ladkin and Joel Witts all finished in the top 15 in the boys combined. Foley Levine said the depth of the team allowed the Lava Bears to win races even when strong skiers like Ladkin missed events due to injury.

“We had a lot of different boys who contributed to the team’s score this year,” Foley Levine said. “It was because of the depth of the team (that we won the championship).”

As was the case on Friday, Summit’s Ava Lilley recorded the fastest combined girls time of the day Saturday, 6:31.34, and led the Storm to win the fourth giant slalom event of the season. But Bend was second at 6:40.24, enough to beat Summit 150-144 in the season-end standings. Mountain View was third with 138 points.

Summit’s Keely Buchanan finished behind Lilley to take second place Saturday with a combined time of 2:09.55. Bend’s Dagny Donohue was third with a combined time of 2:10.69, and Kayla Berg was Mountain View’s fastest finisher at 2:14.38, good for ninth place.

“That was an impressive run by them — they scored a lot of points in the last couple of races,” Foley Levine said of the Storm girls. “Our girls had a really positive season. Dagny Donohue and Emma Jewett skied really well in almost every race. We had some contributors we didn’t necessarily expect, girls who moved up from JV.”

Lilley won the women’s combined season title with 1,180 points and finished second in both the giant slalom and slalom standings. Buchanan won the giant slalom and Donohue won the slalom. Bend’s Jewett was fourth in the combined standings with 749 points, and Berg was sixth with 615.

—Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com

Marketplace