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Alpine team claims third

BAY KELLEY, Sierra Sun

Tahoe-Truckee’s alpine ski team finished strong, but not strong enough, tallying a second place finish in the last race of regular season and finishing third behind North Tahoe and South Tahoe in the league’s overall standings.

The race, held at Diamond Peak on Wednesday, Feb. 16, had the Truckee boys again claiming first place and the girls second for an overall second place finish at the race. North Tahoe, which trailed South Tahoe by one point heading into the race, won first place in the event and, with a lack-luster performance from South Tahoe, took first in the overall standings.

Tim Jitloff claimed first place in the race at Diamond Peak. He was followed by Gary Cook (fourth), Mike Thomas (11th), and Ryan Zarubin (14th).



Stacy Cook won her second consecutive race. Heidi Henderson took fourth place, Kendra Windham, 11th, and Lindsey Anderson, 23rd.

“Slaloms are our weakness,” Truckee Head Coach Pat Mooney said. “We tend to have trouble getting racers to finish, but this race the skiers finished strong. They had solid finishes and did their best.”



Truckee finished third in the overall standings with 28 points on the season. North Tahoe had 32 points and South Tahoe closed with 31 points. Incline Village finished fourth overall with 16 points, Whittell had 13 points and Douglas had seven points.

The next race is the individual championships with the top eight varsity boys and varsity girls from the regular season advancing from each school.

Michael Thomas was Truckee’s top rated skier with 252 cumulative points this season. Gary Cook had 232 points, Tim Jitloff finished with 175, Johny Kane raced for 149, Derek Phebus for 134, Tom Kelly tallied 130, John Parker accumulated 120 and Ryan Zarubin rounds out the pack with 108 points.

The top eight girls from Truckee were led by Kendra Windham with 213 points. Stacey Cook finished with 191 points, Heidi Henderson got 170, Katie Heckendorn claimed 156, Kim Smith tallied 141, Lindsay Anderson possessed 122, Natalie Bergman had 97 and Emma Ferneyhough finished with 72 points.

“In spite of our league standing,” Mooney said, “this year has been one of our most successful years. All the racers skied well and I know that each did their best and tried their hardest. We watched many of the racers improve over the course of the season, both in skill and in confidence and I’m very proud of the way in which they represented their school and the community this year.”

The racers will travel to Sierra-at-Tahoe on Tuesday, Feb. 29, for a dual format race with head-to-head elimination. The first race of the day will be timed and the field of racers reduced to 16 boys and 16 girls. They will then be paired off for head-to-head competition, with the first place finisher racing the 16th place finisher, the second place finisher racing the 15th place finisher, and so on.


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