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Nordic racer takes first

Matt Riddle

Rare moments, indeed. Surpisingly enough, the THS Nordic ski team never had its racer take first in all four categories at the same time- varsity boys, varsity girls, jayvee boys and jayvee girls. But that changed Friday at Tahoe Cross Country in Tahoe City for Lake Tahoe’s dominant Nordic ski team.

Nancy Gordon’s team had a skier take first place in boys’ varsity, boys’ jayvee, girls’ varsity and girls’ jayvee in the 6k Classic race, hosted by North Tahoe High. Andrew Van Blarigan took the varsity boys race, Kara LaPoint took the varsity girls, Ben Kantz took the jayvee boys and Jenny Van Blarigan took the jayvee girls.

The two varsity and the two jayvee squads took first in the races.



On the boys’ side, Van Blarigan finished at 15:58, edging out teammate Joaquin Goodpaster, who finished second at 16:03. They were followed by Matt Gelso in fourth at 16:55, Owen Wright in sixth at 17:42, Sam Sterling in10th at 18:50, Rob Beno in 12th at 19:27, Doug Coombs at 17th at 19:51 and Thomas Hill in 19th at 20:06.

On the girls’ side, LaPoint dominated the race by finishing at 18:26.3, 43 seconds ahead of the second place finisher, Natallie Joffe from Marin Catholic at 19:09.3. Maisha Goodpaster took third at 19:42.7, Whitney Prosser took fifth at 20:22.8, Kati Clark was sixth at 20:53.2, Kayla Evans took ninth at 21:37.7, Alexandra O’Neil took 10th at 22:33.9.



For the jayvee boys, Kantz finished at 19:25. Benji Van Blarigan took fourth at 20:35, Gordon Neelands took seventh at 21:06, Loren Myers took eighth at 21:18, Greg Beno took ninth at 21:38, Andrew Walker took 11th at 22:06, Colin Shane took 18th 24:06, Blake Heckendorn took 25th at 25:21, Sean Powers took 27th at 26:11 and Conrad Thompson took 34th at 28:51.

On the jayvee girls side, THS swept the top four. Van Blarigan beat out teammate Jessica Hooper for first by 37.6 seconds at 24:17.9 while Hooper was at 24:55.5. Katy Jones took third at 25:05.6 and Sarah Heckendorn took fourth at 25:30. After that, there’s a jump to 12th as Jaimie Evans finished at 30:14, Ashley Greenwood took 13th at 30:32 and Yumi Yanagisawa took 14th at 30:37.7.

Next up is a 7k Freestyle race at Northstar on Friday. Race time is 11 a.m.


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