Purgatory Ski Team racers competed at Aspen and Powderhorn last weekend, testing Junior Olympic and regional fields.
In Aspen, Purgatory J3 (ages 13-14) skier Liam Wiess competed against 80 racers from 15 states at the Rocky Mountain/Central Junior Olympics.
Wiess, a four-time qualifier for the Junior Olympic team, placed 19th in downhill.
He was 15th the next day in a super-G.
He did not finish a pair of tough slalom and giant slalom events.
“Liam was skiing great,” head coach Leah LeSage said. “And there was a bit of controversy over the weekend course settings.”
She said 40 percent of the field did not finish the rigorous course.
“We had every reason to think Liam could throw down a top-10 result, but with most of the top seeds failing to finish, he was in good company.”
At Powderhorn Resort near Grand Junction last weekend, Calvin Chase, Jack Eggleston, Maddie Jo Robbins, Gunnar Schwab and Nicholas Unkovskoy of Purgatory competed at the J5 Finale (ages 10 and under) against a field of 93 boys and 91 girls from teams in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.
First-year J5 Robbins placed 37th and 31st in the Saturday giant slalom races. Robbins was 47th and 45th in Sunday’s slalom events. She will race in J5 again next year.
The weekend’s top finish was posted by Eggleston, who was 10th in the Saturday morning giant slalom.
Eggleston crashed and did not finish the remaining three events.
Schwab had a consistent weekend with four finishes (42, 45, 52, 46).
J6 racers Chase and Unkovskoy skied up at the event.
Unkovskoy put the older J5s on notice with three top-20 finishes, including a 13th in Saturday afternoon’s giant slalom. His weekend finishes were 20, 13, 27 and 17.
Chase finished two of the races against the older skiers (60, DNF, DNF, 68).
“All the kids skied well, and Jack (Eggleston) started off strong.” coach Ivan Unkovskoy said in a news release.
“But he was not satisfied ... His crashes were due to aggressive skiing because he wasn’t just trying to finish, he was trying to win each race. Although frustrated, Jack showed exemplary sportsmanship with his encouragement of his younger teammates.”
The Purgatory Alpine Team will travel to Taos next week for the USSA Southern Series Finale.
