At the midway point of the season, Durango High School’s ski team has had strong showings, and the girls squad turned in its top performance of the season with a second-place finish last week at Copper Mountain.
“The season has been pretty good,” DHS head coach Leah LeSage said. “The girls have had some fantastic results. Analise (Gates) won the race at Beaver Creek (on Jan. 5), and we haven’t had anyone win anything in a long time. ... And we have a young team. A lot of the girls are freshmen and sophomores.”
The strong performances from the team are even more impressive considering the it is only able to practice twice a week.
Gates, a junior, placed second in the slalom at Copper with a time of 46.83 seconds. Nederland’s Emily Creek won the event in 46.0 seconds.
Madeline Robbins was right behind Gates in 48.71 to place fourth, and Zoe Kiesel was 20th in 1:01.11.
Gates, Robbins and Abbey Shepard have already qualified for the state competition to be held Feb. 22-24 at Ski Cooper in Leadville. Kiesel has improved on a weekly basis and has a shot at a state spot.
“We’ve got three girls who have consistently been in the top 15, and that’s pretty awesome. And the girls’ second-place finish last week was pretty awesome,” LeSage said. “Zoe Kiesel is one of our freshman who at the beginning of the season was in the 40s and 50s place-wise, but she’s kind of jumped up into the 20s.”
On the boys side, senior Jack Eggleston has qualified for state in the slalom and should challenge for a spot at state in giant slalom if he can put two good runs together.
“He didn’t finish his first two races but was able to come in with a top-10 finish at Winter Park (on Jan. 18), so that was kind of nice to see him pull it together for two runs,” LeSage said of Eggleston qualifying in the slalom.
Harry LeSage, the son of coach LeSage, qualified for state in the giant slalom earlier in the season but suffered a knee injury and is unlikely to be healthy for state, as he still needs crutches to get around.
The DHS skiers have two more events on their schedule before the state competition. The Demons’ next competition is Friday at Winter Park Resort.
kschneider@durangoherald.com
