Valley skiers compete at GPRA Invite

HATCHER PASS — In what may have been the last meet of the irregular prep cross-country ski season, athletes from Palmer, Colony and Susitna Valley high schools competed in the Government Peak Recreation Area Invite at the GPRA trails over the weekend.

The race was open to MSBSD athletes and 48 skiers finished the 5-kilometer course with no certainty around if region or state meets could be held. At GPRA on Saturday, spirits were high that the skiers were able to get a race in at all.

“I’m really thankful that the local governments and everyone is still willing to allow us to put this on because I just see so many athletes who train so hard for their sport and it would just be heartbreaking not to see us race this year,” said Colony skier Garrett Streit.

Streit won the boys 5k by more than 10 seconds over teammate Jayden Rice with a time of 13:57. Palmer’s Jaxson Lee led the Moose with a time of 14:19.2 in third place, followed by teammate Tom Merritt at 14:21.8.

“I felt really good. I’m really proud of my teammates Jayden Rice and Simeon Ramirez. We’ve all come a long ways this year training hard and it’s really paid off so I’m really more happy about how my team performed than I individually did,” said Streit.

Ramirez finished in fifth place in 14:32.3. Layne and Tobias Buchanan finished in sixth and seventh with Clayton Steer in eighth and Isaac Kristich in ninth. Matias Ramirez finished in 10th for Colony.

“In a situation where we are in a pandemic right now, I just love the sport and any chance I get I just want to get out and be able to ski and this year’s been really rough for training and racing and we already have a limited amount of races, but any chance we can and it’s amazing that our community’s able to put this together for us and make it safe for everybody out here,” said Jaxson Lee. “I’m just racing every race like it’s my last one bc it could very well be.”

Skiers were not all lined up within close distance of one another at a starting line like they traditionally would. In a socially distanced solution, skiers each started in timed intervals and separate clocks were kept tracking each skier’s time through the 5k course that went backward through the GPRA trails.

“I find the interval starts a lot harder for me personally just because I do so much better with someone next to me pushing me. I think interval starts are a lot more challenging,” said Palmer’s Aila Berrigan.

Katey Houser took the title in the girls 5k race for Palmer with a time of 15:03.4. Houser, Berrigan and Rosie Whittington-Evans took the top three spots and did it in style. Paying homage to Alaskan skiing royalty and Olympic Gold Medalist Kikkan Randall, the trio and teammates ditched their traditional blue and white racing tights to wear pink along the race course on Saturday.

“Pink makes us feel really fast,” said Berrigan.

Houser would’ve finished in seventh place if she had competed in the boys race with her time. Whittington-Evans finished just more than a dozen seconds behind Houser at 15:14.4 and Berrigan was just slightly behind Whittington-Evans at 15:30.9.

“Wearing things as a team makes us feel more together,” said Whittington-Evans.

Berrigan was followed by Elle Henneman at 17:02.8 and Anna Bell at 17:58.5. Colony senior Lydia Bushey finished at 18:01.5 and was trailed by teammate Lucy Shea at 18:18.5. Nicole Bell finished in 18:58.2 followed by Brittyn Werner and Emerson LeRousse. Neither Berrigan, Houser or Whittington-Evans were enamored by the new course route that took skiers up a dramatically long and steep hill in the middle of the course.

“When I’m feeling tired I think okay everyone else is feeling tired so this is my chance to push and I can do one of two things, I can either just surrender to the trail you know and just finish the course tired or I can really like find that pain cave and push past it because everyone else is in pain. You’re not the only one,” said Houser.

In making a fashionably fast statement on skis donning pink tops, the trio were thankful that their season was not taken from them entirely by the coronavirus pandemic, even if it has altered race frequency and opponents dramatically.

“We’re really lucky you know. It hasn’t felt that much different other than the obvious, no mass starts. It’s felt really familiar and good to have something that we can hold on to and come and ski and race with everyone and everyone is so happy and we’ve had this many races,” said Houser.