Racers Finish Season Strong

MEAD, WA - Mt. Spokane hosted two EEYSL events this season.

The second, March 10 and 11, was the final event of the EEYSL points season. The standard format event included a Giant Slalom race on Saturday and a Slalom race on March 11.

BART finishes were led by one of their youngest competitors.

Mackenzie Davis of Milton Freewater entered the weekend 20 points out of the lead for the J6 class.

By the end of the GS event, she was 20 points in the lead and she never looked back, finishing the season as the leading Girl's J6 competitor.

Trevor Trimble, of Richland, went into the weekend in fifth place and needed to win all four runs and get a little help to reach the season podium. Warm weather meant huge ruts for older racers and Trimble's first run of GS was a little too conservative. He was able to adjust and had a strong second run, finishing 3rd overall in the event. A hooked tip in the first run of Slalom caused a long hike and ended his podium hopes, but his second run performances in both events were enough to hold on to fifth overall in the league.

Jonathan Rasch and Max Vandersloot, both of Walla Walla, made personal milestones by gaining their first league top 10 and top five finishes, respectively.

The Bluewood team finished in fourth place in the team standings.

The Schweitzer Alpine Racing School won top honors, followed by the Spokane Ski Racing Association and the 49 Degrees Alpine Race Team.

BART coaches were happy with the finish and pointed out that team size has a lot to do with results due to the scoring system.

Points per athlete, which the coaches use to measure the quality of their program compared to the other teams, puts the Bluewood team strongly in second.

Head coach Hal White is happy with the team's performance.

"To have the second best group of athletes top to bottom is great," White said. "The teams in front of us in overall points have lots of skiers and way more resources both on and off the mountain. For a small team, BART has really shown that it can develop good skiers."

The weekend of March 24-25 will be the final race weekend for the other two teams.

Qualifying members of the youth team will be competing at the Buddy Werner Championships and the Junior racers will be competing at the Northwest J3 Championships.