Pioneer Valley skiers have a home-field advantage today at the MIAA Alpine Ski Championships, with racers from around the state traveling to Berkshire East to compete with the best Massachusetts has to offer.
Mohawk Trail is sending four girls and three boys to compete while Frontier had two boys and one girl qualify. A total of 146 boys and 145 girls will be in competition.
Warrior Taylor Loomis and Red Hawk Coriann Delaney are both expected to impress today. Loomis finished the regular season at the top of the leader boards in Western Mass., while Delaney took first at the Western Mass. meet.
For Loomis, the goal is to finish near the top of the leaderboard today, hoping to race well both in slalom and giant slalom.
“She wants to get top three in both disciplines,” Mohawk Trail girls coach Brandon Boucias said. “Slalom, she wants to win. At the state level, the competition ramps up. She’s been skiing well, we’re hoping she puts it together and gets a top three finish overall. That’s realistic for her.”
Delaney should finish right near the top with Loomis, having taken second overall during the regular season in Western Mass. The senior has caught fire late in the season, taking first at the last meet of the regular season before winning Western Mass.
Boucias also has high hopes for his other three girls racing. Emmy Sisum (seventh) and Amelie Rowehl (eighth) both finished in the top 10 in the league this season while Sofiya Slocik-Gritzner enjoyed an excellent first season of skiing which allowed her to qualify for states.
“Amelie and Emmy, if we can get them in the top 30 or 40, that’d be great for them,” Boucias said. “Sofiya is just a seventh grader. It’s great to get her the experience of going to states. She’s a great kid and has a bright future.”
In what was a successful season, the Mohawk girls are looking to finish on the right note during states.
“We had a really good season,” Boucias said. “For having a pretty young and small team. We had three girls in the top 10, we won the league and had the number one girl in the league. All those things came together. I want to give those girls credit, they ski and train hard.”
Ben Martino and Ben Makosiej are competing today for the Frontier boys, with Martino finishing 10th overall in the boys’ South Division during the regular season.
Weston Den Ouden, who finished sixth in the North Division during the regular season, leads the Warrior boys at the meet. He’s joined by teammates Michael Harrison and Phineas Tuttman, who are both looking to capitalize on a strong regular season.
With the race taking place at Berkshire East, the mountain that held each meet during the regular season, both teams are using the home mountain to their advantage.
Both teams have trained on the course this week, hoping to get a leg up on the teams that are coming in from around the state and have never raced down the steep Charlemont hills.
Boucias sees it as an advantage for his team, as other teams ski at Wachusett Mountain during the season, which is more of a flat course than Berkshire East.
Still, he knows many of the racers who will be in attendance have experience on steep hills.
“The skiers out here don’t ski as well at Wachusett,” Boucias said. “It helps us. Most of the really good skiers out east all train out at mountains in Vermont so they’re ready for the hills.”
The racing begins at 9:30 this morning, with the second portion of the race beginning at an undetermined time after.