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Now the Chisago Lakes girls apline ski team knows what it’s like to ski with a target on their back.

In their first week back on the competitive slopes since their state championship last season, the girls finished in second place out of 27 teams  at the Wild Mountain Invitational on Friday, December 22.

The girls got a great run from Hannah Janzig, who finished in fifth place in the meet, and a couple of nice supporting runs to just get into second place with 513 points, narrowly ahead of Minnetonka.

Their team score would’ve challenged, if not surpassed Mankato West’s first place tally of 541 if not for a few falls. Both Hannah Stec and Sophie Janzig, who will be two of the top performers for Chisago Lakes this year, fell, and didn’t register a score for varsity. They both finished in the top 15 on their first run of the day before the stumbles in their second run.

The good news, however, was that Megan Cariter, Alicia Sandberg, and Bailey LeTourneau all stepped up when those two struggled. Cartier finished in 17th place with a combined time of 1:14.41 and Sandberg and LeTourneau finished back-to-back in 28th and 29th place. Sandberg finished with a combined time of 1:16.58 and LeTourneau in 1:16.60.

Hannah Janzig’s fifth place came after a fifth place finish on the red course in her first run and a seventh place finish on the blue coure. She finished the two taces in 1:10.82.

Despite Sophie Janzig’s fall, she was able to recover to at least register a finish and a score, and that proved  very valuable.

After being tied with Minnetonka at 513 to finish the meet, the tiebreaker is the next best finisher on the teams. Sophie’s finish played when Minnetonka’s fifth and sixth place skiers both disqualified.
“It was a great day for the girls at Wild Mountain,” Assistant Coach Su Leslie said. “We had solid finishes all around.”

Boys
Falls did the boys in during their runs, but the exciting potential was there.

The Mower brothers made their statement as the new leaders of the team after the graduation of Anders Brown.

Jamie Mower finished third on the blue course and eighth on the red course to finished third overall with a combine time of 1:10.92.

Older brother Ryan finished in fifth place overall with a combine time of 1:11.43. He finished sixth on the blue course and sixth on the red course.

Zach Hennen had a nice first run for the boys, finishing in 36.52 seconds in 14th place, but a stumble in the second run sent him all the way down to 76th place overall after both runs were tallied.
Mike Frischmon had a nice 33rd place finish on his first run, also, but the same thing happened to him. A big fall resulted in a 93rd place finish in the meet.
Auggie Brown and Jack LeTourneau each disqualified, leaving those top four as the varsity score.

The ‘Cats still placed seventh among 28 teams, which is impressive considering the falls they took. Once the boys get a little deeper into the season and can clean up their runs a bit, this team should be able to compete with anyone.

“Both of these teams have the ability to go far this season if they can focus and perform at the big races later on,” Leslie noted after the meet.

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