The weekend of racing at the Birkie Trailhead near Cable, WI brought yet another challenging competition upon the skiers as well as coaches from CCSA and Midwest high schools.
Day one started with the men’s classic 10k individual start. With temperatures around 36 degrees and raining, the course quickly deteriorated despite the best efforts of the organizers.
Adam Martin, representing Northern Michigan University, dominated the field with a winning time of 30:24.5 and a comfortable margin of 28 seconds on his teammate, Fredrik Schwencke, placing second. Another Wildcat placing within the top five was freshman, Zak Katterson (4th). The Saint Scholastica and Michigan Tech men were led by Ryan St. Clair (9th) and Gaspard Cuenot, rounding out the top ten respectively. “I have to give credit to Gaspard for battling hard after making a poor choice to double pole.” said Michigan Tech’s coach Joe Haggenmiller.
The women’s 5k was taken over by NMU placing eight skiers into the top ten. The fastest collegiate skier was NMU’s Vivian Hett (2nd) with the time 17:58.0 ahead of her teammates Nicole Schneider (3rd) and Sophie Schimpl (4th). The top MTU woman was Sonja Hedblom taking 12th place. With all the NMU women and majority of men placing in the top ten, Sten Fjeldheim said: “I am very happy with the performance of our team. We took our focus away from making the teams for Junior and U23 World Championships which certainly reflected on our results.”
Day two kicked off with the men’s 20k freestyle mass start. MTU’s Gaspard Cuenot topped the field in an exciting final sprint against NMU’s Adam Martin (2nd) and Fredrik Schwencke (3rd). His winning time was 58:39.4. Zak Ketterson (4th) and Leo Hipp (7th) were two other Wildcats finishing in the top along with Kyle Marshall (8th) from University of Wisconsin Green Bay and David Jaszczak (9th) from Michigan Tech.
The Wildcats were led by Nicole Schneider who completed the course in 49:26.1 followed by Sophie Schimpl (3rd) and Caroline Brisbois (4th). Just outside the top ten placed Elizabeth Evans (11th) from Saint Scholastica, Bree Mucha (13th) representing UWGB, and Carolyn Lucca (14th) from Michigan Tech.
“There were some highs and some lows and are hungry for improvement across the board. I was impressed by our teams tenacity in the physical & technical challenges of skiing in warm rainy weather. We are really excited to bring the CCSA to Duluth next weekend!” said Scholastica’s head coach Maria Stuber.