The early season snowfall has been a blessing for high school ski teams in the area. Last Thursday, the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys and girls ski teams were able to join four other teams in a meet held at Mont du Lac in a relaxing environment.
"All the coaches kept a pretty informal feel to the race," said CEC coach Ryan Zimny. "We all tried to treat it more as a scrimmage to allow the skiers to shake off the cobwebs."
Cook won the event in both the boys and girls races, with CEC finishing second in both races, Hermantown third, Duluth Central fourth and Duluth Denfeld fifth.
Beau Larson of Cook won the boys race with a time of 1:00.78 while CEC's John Green was third and Nick Grames was fifth. Kyle Manney of CEC was 10th in the race.
Duluth Central's Barbara Mikova was the girls overall winner while CEC had a pair of skiers in the top 10. Eliza Grames of the Jacks was fifth and Katrina Anderson was seventh.
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"I was pretty pleased with our performances since none of our skiers had any time training in gates yet this year," mentioned Zimny. "By the second run, most of the kids were starting to turn it on."
Unlike the past five seasons where teams had to wait for snow to be made, this year the early season snow has created good conditions on most all of the area ski hills.
"The race course held together pretty well," stated Zimny. "When you get all the new snow fall like we've had, it usually makes for soft conditions."
