Skiing In Essential Dead Heat After First Day of EISA Championships

Friday, February 24

Wilmington/Lake Placid, N.Y.

9:30 AM

Dartmouth College

EISA Day One

Carly Elsinger skis the giant slalom at the Harvard Carnival, Feb. 10, 2023

Sophomore Carly Elsinger

Photo by: Gil Talbot

Skiing In Essential Dead Heat After First Day of EISA Championships

2/24/2023 4:47:00 PM | Skiing

Results

Sophomore Carly Elsinger and John Steel Hagenbuch won their races

By: Rick Bender

WILMINGTON/LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Sophomores Carly Elsinger and John Steel Hagenbuch won their respective races at the EISA Championships hosted by St. Lawrence, helping Dartmouth finish the day just one point behind Vermont (466-465) in the team standings. Only New Hampshire (368) is within 100 points of the two schools.

The women's giant slalom was the first event of the day, and Elsinger enjoyed the lead following the morning run at Whiteface with a time of 1:03.36. Only two skiers were within one second of her time, one of whom was freshman Riley Grosdidier (1:04.32) with Vermont's Justine Clement between them, a mere 0.14 seconds off the pace. Senior Gwen Wattenmaker sat just outside the top 10 with the 11th-best time of 1:05.20.

The next race to begin was the women's 5K freestyle with an interval start over at Mount Van Hoevenberg. Sophomore Ava Thurston was the second to launch, and her time of 14:33.0 put her in position to reach the podium. Two other skiers — Lucinda Anderson of New Hampshire and Haley Brewster of Vermont — managed to eclipse that time with Anderson edging out Brewster by almost seven seconds at 14:10.3. That left Thurston in third for her sixth podium out of the seven races she has entered this season.

The last skier to launch was sophomore Tatum Witter, and all she did was put together the best finish of her career, taking fourth in 14:44.9. Her classmate, Nina Seemann, wasn't far behind in 14:49.1, good for seventh, completing the Big Green scoring with 120 points. But UNH just beat out Dartmouth for the team victory, 122-120, with Vermont close behind in third with 115 points. The 10 fastest times all came from those three schools.

Back at Whiteface, the men's alpine teams hit the slopes for the GS, and Plymouth State's Max Haussmann provided the fastest time in 1:00.90. But the next six skiers were all within half a second of Haussmann, including sophomore Oliver Morgan in sixth (1:01.27) and freshman Oscar Zimmer in seventh (1:01.38). Senior Hunter Brayton had Dartmouth's next-best time at 1:02.85, leaving him in 21st heading into the afternoon.

While the men's GS was running, the men's 10K freestyle got underway, and that race belonged to Hagenbuch. The sixth skier to launch in the interval start, the native of Ketchum, Idaho, went to work establishing the time to beat. By the 5K checkpoint, he enjoyed a lead of nearly 30 seconds, and he simply continued to pull away over the final half of the race. When all was complete, Hagenbuch had his second victory and fourth podium in five races this year with his time of 23:57.2, more than a minute ahead of Vermont's Jacob Nystedt.

Freshman Jack Lange narrowly missed out on joining Hagenbuch on the podium thanks to producing the second-best time on the second lap. But his time of 25:12.7 left him 1.2 seconds behind Harvard's Rémi Drolet in the battle for third. Sophomore Luke Allan provided the final points for the Big Green, crossing the tape in 13th place (26:16.1), but Dartmouth was barely beaten out again for the team title as the Catamounts amassed 123 points to the Big Green's 120.

The afternoon alpine runs were good to Dartmouth as Elsinger nipped Clement again to maintain her lead and take the gold with a combined time of 1:03.36. Grosdidier slipped just one spot to fourth place at 2:13.54, only 0.21 seconds behind Plymouth State's Hanna Larsson in third. Wattenmaker, meanwhile, climbed into the top 10 by recording the second-best time on the second run, finishing in seventh (2:13.72). The trio gave the Big Green 126 points, easily beating the field with Vermont second with 93.

Both Morgan and Zimmer mostly maintained their positions from the morning with the former moving up one place into fifth with a combined time of 2:07.31 and the latter dropping one spot into eighth in 2:07.88. Brayton, on the other hand, was one of the biggest climbers, jumping seven places on the leaderboard into 14th with his time of 2:09.38. Vermont's Joachim Lindstoel eked past St. Michael's Eirik Kveno by six-hundredths of a second at 2:06.60 for the gold, while another Catamount, Mathias Tefre, claimed the bronze. Dartmouth's 99 points put them in third place in the event with Vermont posting a convincing win over St. Michael's, 135-106.

The EISA Championships will conclude tomorrow with the slalom beginning at 9:30 a.m. and 20K classic races at 10 a.m.