HHS Alpine welcomes regional teams for annual Invitational

Halfway through its season, Huntsville High School’s Alpine team is racing its way to another fabulous year.

The team welcomed skiers from across Simcoe-Muskoka and beyond on Friday, January 13 for the annual HHS Invitational, the second in a series of four races that teams in the Georgian Bay area compete in – the first was at Mount St. Louis Moonstone (MSLM) in December and the remaining two are scheduled for MSLM on January 18 (cancelled due to bus cancellations) and at Osler Bluff on February 8. The GBSSA championships will be on February 15 at Osler Bluff in Collingwood. The OFSAA provincial championships are held February 26-28 at Blue Mountain.

Head coach Nico Byl said the team’s success is indicative of the students’ commitment in what is a short and disjointed season. It starts in late November or early December and runs to the end of February, divided by a two-week Christmas break and two-week exam break at the end of January.

“The exciting thing for me is we have a group of kids who, even though the season is disjointed, they do make an effort to come out to the few practices we can have and to be engaged,” said Byl. “It speaks to them really enjoying the sport itself. Unfortunately, we don’t have opportunity to build a really strong team culture but they take it on and they make it happen and they do pretty well.”

Weekly practice sessions focus partly on ski improvement and partly on gate training for the next race’s format, usually Giant Slalom but the HHS Invitational is a Slalom event. The difference is in the distance between the gates (poles) that skiers must weave through – gates are spaced closer together in Slalom.

Ten of the 16 GBSSA teams participated in the HHS Invitational. Huntsville is the only Muskoka school that fields an Alpine team and had 24 athletes in the race. Here’s how they did:

Males, Open

Team
3rd place: Jakob Heinz, Cole Stevens, Matthew Stevens, Gage Magee

Individual
3^rd Gage Magee, 58.63
4^th Jakob Heinz, 58.68

Females, Open

Team
1st place: Addie Howell, Emily Jason, Emma Magee, Sydney Stevens

Individual
3^rd Addie Howell, 59.45
4^th Sydney Stevens, 61.81
7^th Emma Magee, 65.12

Males, High School-trained

Team
3^rd HHS A: Sean Sanderson, Alex Dube, Ethan Murdy, Chris Miller, Theo Pinckard

6^th HHS B: Andrew Sutcliffe, Zack Belfry, Josh Lawson, Cameron Heinz, Jacob Hall

Individual
2^nd Ethan Murdy, 69.91
6^th Chris Miller, 74.90
9^th Andrew Sutcliffe, 80.50
21^st Sean Sanderson, 99.76

Females, High School

Team
2^nd: Madi Farnsworth, Samantha Goldring, Zoe Kruusmagi, Kaitlyn Belfry, Jamie Boysen

Individual
2^nd Kaitlyn Belfry, 81.78
6^th Zoe Kruusmagi, 85.51
10^th Samantha Goldring, 94.28

See full results here.

Don’t miss out on Doppler! Sign up for our free, twice-weekly newsletter here.