HANCOCK, Vt. -- Junior
Hannah West and senior captain
Michael Cooper led their respective teams and four Bobcats tallied top-30 finishes in the slalom Friday at the Middlebury Carnival, which doubles as the NCAA East Regional.
The Bates men's alpine team placed fifth out of 16 scoring teams with 62 carnival points and the women placed seventh with 50 carnival points.
Cooper (Alta, Calif.) paced the men with a two-run combined time of 1:39.04, good for 22nd place out of 82 competitors. He earned 23 carnival points and nine NCAA points. Sophomore Arie van Vuuren (Boulder, Colo.) came in right behind Cooper in 23rd place with a two-run combined time of 1:39.67, good for 22 carnival points and eight NCAA points. Junior Joe Gillis (Branford, Conn.) rounded out the men's scoring and completed a top-30 sweep for the Bobcats by placing 28th with a two-run combined time of 1:41.35, earning 17 carnival points and three NCAA points.
Senior captain Ryan Clermont (Lincoln, N.H.) didn't score for Bates, but he also turned in an excellent performance, coming in 31st with a two-run combined time of 1:41.43.
West (Bend, Ore.) had the best finish of any Bates skier, coming in 18th out of 81 women with a two-run combined time of 1:43.45, earning 23 carnival points and 13 NCAA points. Sophomore Daphne James (Sausalito, Calif.) just missed a top-30 finish, placing 33rd with a two-run combined time of 1:47.03, good for 14 carnival points. And first-year Grace Schierwagen (North Hampton, Pa.) rounded out the scoring in 34th place, earning 13 carnival points with a two-run combined time of 1:47.66, less than a second behind James.
The Bates alpine skiing teams combined with the Nordic squads to score 190 carnival points on day one of the carnival, good for 8th out of 16 scoring schools. Currently, Bates is just 10 points behind seventh-place Bowdoin with four events remaining for the four teams.
The alpine teams compete in the giant slalom Saturday to wrap up the two-day Middlebury Carnival.
