Practice Pays in Another Marian Title
February 24, 2014
By Andy Sneddon
Special to Second Half
HARBOR SPRINGS – Familiarity breeds contempt.
And championships.
Rob Rhoades and his Bloomfield Hills Marian ski team made several trips north this season to familiarize themselves with the steep and tricky terrain at Nub’s Nob.
Those journeys paid off, again, on Monday as the Mustangs won the MHSAA Division 2 Girls Skiing Final, edging runner-up Houghton-Hancock, 74-81.
“This year we really committed a lot of extra training on the weekends,” Rhoades said. “We came up here and trained often – hard, long weekends, cold weekends. This was probably the busiest season I’ve had coming Up North.”
It was the third title in five years for Marian, which began its regimen of regular yearly training visits north during the mid 2000s. The Mustangs won their first MHSAA ski title in 2010 and repeated in 2011.
Coincidence? Not at all.
“The extra training and coming up on the weekends, that’s the big thing,” said Rhoades, who completed his 25th year as Marian’s coach. “It makes a big difference. The mechanics of skiing on a hill like this versus downstate at Alpine Valley (near Milford) is totally different. There’s a lot of G forces on the back and a lot more pressure on the ski (at Nub’s). You have to be a stronger skier too."
Petoskey senior Mia Ciccoretti was the individual slalom champion, while sophomore Carlee McCardel of Traverse City St. Francis-Elk Rapids repeated as the giant slalom winner.
Marian was led by Kat Streng and Breann Lunghamer. Streng finished eighth in the GS and 14th in the slalom; Lunghamer was third in slalom, 12th in GS. Teammate Paige Weymouth was 11th in GS.
McCardel edged Mallory Eliopolous of Grand Rapids West Catholic to earn a repeat as the GS champion.
McCardel, a student at St. Francis, said one of the biggest challenges she faced came earlier in the season, when the weight of carrying an MHSAA championship began to mount.
“I (felt the pressure) at the beginning of the season, but then my coach kind of sat me down and was like, ‘You’re not defending a state championship, you’re pursuing another one,’” she said. “It helped me just kinda calm down.”
She also drew on something she picked up from Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio.
“Mark Dantonio (said) pressure is good, stress is not,” she said. “So I had to look at it more as that pressure is good and not get stressed out. I looked at it that way, and it made me work harder.”
Ciccoretti closed a standout career on top after finishing second a year ago to Mandy Haferkorn of Kingsley in the slalom final. Haferkorn placed fourth on Monday.
“I watched video from last year, and I was like, ‘Why did she beat me?’” said Ciccoretti, who finished fourth in the GS on Monday. “I figured out how to go faster, and it worked. I just trained a lot.”
Much of that training came at Nub’s, site of Petoskey practices and most home meets. Still, it’s a hill on which Ciccoretti said she isn’t all that comfortable.
“We do train here every day,” she said. “But I’ve had some bad experiences on this hill. I’ve fallen a couple times. It was good to get back from all of those.
“The key was really to just stay calm, don’t really let the nerves get to me. Just go out there and know my capabilities and just go from there, just have fun with it rather than think about what could go wrong or what could happen. Just do it, like I do every day.”
Sydney Reynolds of Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central finished second to Ciccoretti in the slalom.
Eliopolous, Reynolds, Tia Esposito of Harbor Springs and Nora Reed of Spring Lake joined Ciccoretti as double medalists.
PHOTO: Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood's Julia Briggs puts the brakes on one of her runs during Monday's MHSAA Final.
Redettes Repeat, Set Stage for More
February 27, 2017
By James Cook
Special for Second Half
HARBOR SPRINGS – Two down.
How many more to go?
Marquette went back-to-back with Division 1 girls skiing titles Monday at Nub’s Nob in Harbor Springs, and the Redettes’ young roster could add to that total in the near future.
“We won’t be losing anybody, so I really hope we will,” said junior Sadah Scheidt, who won the slalom crown for the second straight season. “We didn’t know if we were going to win this year or last year. (When they announce it), your heart jumps out of your chest.”
Marquette won the championship with a roster devoid of a single senior.
“They’ll be back next year, looking to repeat for sure,” first-year coach Dan Menze said.
The Redettes have two juniors, and the rest of the squad is freshmen and sophomores.
Menze said there was some pressure to keep the Marquette boys championship streak going – which he did – but the stress was just as heavy on the girls side, if not more.
“There was definitely more pressure on the girls team,” Menze said. “We weren’t quite as deep. They really came out and skied awesome. We had some bobbles, but most teams did today. We just had less.”
Menze took over for Marty Paulsen after guiding the Great Lakes Ski Academy.
“The main things were administrative on my behalf,” Menze said. “The coaching aspect, I feel I’ve done well throughout. I’ve had a great mentor (in Wendy Maas) to help me all along the way.”
Scheidt led a Marquette effort that witnessed the Redettes emerge with four first-team all-staters.
But when all was said and done, the girls didn’t copy Marquette’s boys team by showing up for the outdoors awards ceremony in shorts.
“We have a little bit more dignity than that,” Scheidt joked. “We face-palmed. We were like, ‘Oh, no.’ Typical senior boys.”
Scheidt claimed her second slalom title by more than 2.5 seconds over the two combined runs. She had the best time in each run, and her second shaved three hundredths of second off the first.
“I definitely prefer slalom over GS,” said Scheidt, who was 23rd in GS.
Ainsley Kirk earned all-state honors with a fourth-place slalom and third in GS. Jacey Johnson was ninth in slalom and 16th in GS, while Natalie Robinia was 17th in GS.
Marquette claimed the Division 1 girls championship with 73 points to Traverse City Central’s 95. Traverse City West was not far behind in third with 98, moving up a place from last season’s finish.
"A strong third," West head coach Ed Johnson said. "It was close. They won the slalom and went into the GS feeling pretty strong, but Central ended up edging us. It was fun to see the two Traverse City teams battling it out that close. That was exciting."
“We were hoping to finish in the top 3,” Traverse City Central senior Maggie Dutmers said. “We didn’t really know, because the top three teams have been very close in past competitions. We were hoping for a trophy. We were hoping for the first, but very, very happy with second.”
The Trojans finished runner-up for the seventh time in the last nine years.
Dutmers finish fourth in GS and sixth in slalom to earn first-team all-state honors in both disciplines.
Fenton’s Zoe Weinberg, skiing as an individual qualifier, won the giant slalom championship to end her prep career with a championship effort.
Weinberg trailed Bloomfield Hills Marian sophomore Olivia Weymouth after the first GS run by nearly a tenth of a second, but trimmed 1.36 seconds off her second run to pass Weymouth, who ended up second.
“Winning was something I just wanted to do,” Weinberg said. “My second run was one of my best runs of the season. It was intense, waiting to see.”
Weinberg had hoped to do better in the morning’s slalom session, but made up for it in the afternoon.
“I was excited GS came through,” Weinberg said. “It’s a good way to go out.”
Weinberg finishes her high school skiing career with seven first-team all-state finishes.
She earned all-state all four years in giant slalom and three more times in slalom, capturing a championship in each.
Weinberg won the slalom title as a sophomore and was runner-up last year. She had a runner-up GS finish as a sophomore and third last season, adding a sixth-place GS medal as a freshman.
“It’s a good number,” Weinberg said. “It was really exciting to go out that way.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Marquette's Ainsley Kirk juts past a gate during the Division 1 Finals on Monday at Nub's Nob. (Middle) Fenton's Zoe Weinberg caps an impressive career with another strong set of races. (Photos by James Cook.)