The Vernon boys finally broke through, while the Ridgewood girls earned their second straight state title at the New Jersey Interscholastic Ski Racing Association team championships on Sunday at Mountain Creek in Vernon.
Vernon’s Kyle Hayes posted the top time in each of the four runs he took over the course of the championships, registering a combined time of 1:21.98 over two races in the giant slalom competition held Friday and a total of 1:06.54 in two slalom runs on Sunday.
“It’s been really important to our whole team because we’ve really worked hard to get to this point,” Hayes, a senior, said. “The first two years, we weren’t able to get to this point, and then last year, we had some trouble, and there was some mix-ups with everything. And then this year, it was really amazing that we were able to pull together as a team and get to this point.”
Sunday’s win earned Vernon redemption after it entered the second day of last year’s championship in first place and finished in fifth after running into trouble in the slalom competition. Hayes had finished first in both giant slalom races, but in his first crack at the slalom, he fell and finished 58th in that run.
Hayes rebounded and posted the best time for all skiers in the second run of the slalom, but teammate Troy Livoti did not finish that course. As Vernon faltered, Don Bosco went on to claim its fourth straight state title.
“It definitely stuck with our team the whole time,” Hayes said of his mistake last year. “But we definitely pushed through it and forgot about it. And in the end, we were able to really come back together and really get to the point where we wanted to be.”
Vernon nearly ran into more heartbreak Sunday. In the final slalom run, a “hairpin” two-gate vertical combination sat at the bottom of a hill, demanding agility from racers at a time when they could be moving at their fastest. The hairpin gave numerous racers trouble; on the second run of the course, an injured Don Bosco skier had to be carried off by sled after he hit the base of the hairpin and somersaulted in the air, landing on his head.
Newton’s first racer, Frank Antonucci, missed the hairpin and was disqualified. Antonucci exited the course to the left of the finish line gates, accidentally pulling loose an electric wire powering the course’s official timing system.
While this was happening, Vernon’s second racer, Matt Tavares, sped his way through the slalom cleanly, but because the timer had disconnected, he needed to redo the run. His second attempt through, he clipped the pole after the hairpin and had to hike back to correctly cross the slalom pole he missed, adding a chunk of time to his score.
Tavares’ first slalom run came in at 0:36.72, fifth-best in the competition. The second registered at 0:45.43, 34th-best. But finishing the race gave him Vernon’s fourth-best slalom score, seven seconds better than the fifth racer, whose score does not count toward a team’s total in the competition.
Those seven seconds that came from finishing instead of giving up made a big difference, as Vernon (10:51.36) held off Ridgewood (10:52.19) by less than a second when all was tallied up and counted from the two days of skiing. Third place went to Don Bosco (10:55.03).
“Matt Tavares’ second run didn’t go as well as he wanted it to, but like, we wouldn’t be in position to win states if he didn’t do well the day before in GS,” Vernon coach Roger Foco said. “So one hiccup today. And his effort and recovery, those half-seconds and giving it his all and getting to the line first is stepping up, even though some people might look at it as an accident. His effort to make up that time even though he didn’t have the best run is amazing.”
Tavares had the eighth-best time in the giant slalom event, while teammate Livoti helped Vernon’s cause with the 10th-fastest result.
Though teams send six skiers down each course, only the top four skiers count toward the club’s total time in each event. Ridgewood’s top four boys had the best collective time in the slalom event, with Connor Devir (1:11.96) and Andrew Gioia (1:13.26) finishing fourth- and fifth-fastest.
Ridgewood girls repeat
While the Ridgewood boys finished agonizingly short of a title, the Maroons’ girls won its third state championship in four years, besting Pingry (11:34.83) by about 12 seconds. Ridgewood's high school skiing team has taken off quickly since its inception four years ago, when a group of parents came to Karl Roecker and asked him, “We have all these kids, why don’t we have a high school team?”
The parents wanted to know if Roecker would coach; four years later, he’s celebrated a trio of championships.
“This group of girls here are the last of the ones we started with,” Roecker said. “So a lot of them grew up skiing together. They’ve been skiing together before high school, so this is just a culmination of lots of years of hard work for them.”
Ridgewood posted the best time in the slalom competition (5:08.88), topping Pingry by more than 13 seconds. Jane McKinley finished with the seventh-best score (1:14.04) Sunday, while Mollie Goetze, Sarah Marcovici and Vanessa D’Angelo were 10th-, 12th- and 16th-best, respectively.
McKinley said she and her teammates had a great time on the first slalom course, which was built primarily for speed.
“Everyone once we got to the bottom, we were like, ‘That was the most fun course,’” McKinley said. “We had such a good time. And so I think that like set a good precedent for the next run, where we were just like, ‘Alright, let’s just have a good time and ski it.’ … The first one, it was straighter. The boys’ course was super turny, and you could see they were really struggling. But with ours, it was just like, send your skis down the hill and go. So that’s what makes it fun, because you just go fast.”
Tenafly, which finished third in the slaloms and fifth overall, had more star power than Ridgewood - Megan Yi and Kristen Yi had the second- and third-best times in slalom - but depth carried the Maroons. That made for a slightly different story from Ridgewood’s last title-winning team, which saw Kaitlin Devir finish as the top skier in the team competition and later go on to win individual honors at the Race of Champions.
With Devir having graduated, “we had a lot to prove that we weren’t just a one-horse team,” Roecker said.
Consider it proven.
“I think we’ve always had such a strong team, and it’s great to show you don’t need just one person to make the team,” McKinley said. “It was a group effort, and we all put in the work and tried our hardest to make it happen. And I think that makes the win so much better, because it’s like, ‘Oh, it isn’t just that one person.’ Even though we love Kaitlin, love her, but it was great to be like, ‘You know, we’re all great skiers. We can do it, too.’”
GIRLS
OVERALL
TEAMS: 1-Ridgewood. 2-Pingry. 3-Mountain Lakes.
GIANT SLALOM
TEAMS: 1-Pingry. 2-Ridgewood. 3-Blair.
SLALOM
TEAMS: 1-Ridgewood. 2-Pingry. 3-Tenafly.
BOYS
OVERALL
TEAMS: 1-Vernon. 2-Ridgewood. 3-Don Bosco Prep.
GIANT SLALOM
TEAMS: 1-Vernon. 2-Don Bosco Prep. 3-Ridgewood.
SLALOM
TEAMS: 1-Ridgewood. 2- Don Bosco Prep. 3-Vernon.