On Target at Arrowhead - OUA Invitational Team Sprints

In a break from the winter deep freeze, the University of Waterloo Nordic Ski team raced Saturday at Arrowhead Provincial Park in Huntsville, Ontario for the OUA Invitational Team Sprints. The temperature was balmy at -9°C with light snow in the morning and sun in the afternoon. Seven of the nine Ontario universities with Nordic ski teams (Lakehead and Algoma missing) competed making the competition very strong. In particular, the women's field included two top Canadian University athletes fresh from FISU World University Games.

For anyone unfamiliar with the team sprint race format, it consists of heats of two man teams competing  with athletes alternating laps for a total of three laps each. In this case the laps were 1km long. Teams compete in semifinals where the top teams from each heat advance to the finals to declare a winner.

The University of Waterloo sent one men's and one women's team with an additional woman racing on a mixed university team with another athlete from Nipissing. The women's team consisting of Alison Stephenson and Katie Madden qualified comfortably in third place to advance to the finals. Johanna Van Schie-Copol, competing on a mixed team, successfully competed in her very first team sprint but did not advance. The men's team consisting of Colin Elliott and Orion Austrup also failed to qualify for the finals with a seventh place finish in the semifinals and finished thirteenth overall.

The women's teams were the only University of Waterloo athletes competing in the finals. Stephenson got off to a slow start in eighth place going into the first climb but gained ground on the other teams and lapped through in fourth. Madden followed with another strong lap battling with the Queens University team. The Waterloo women fought hard but fell seconds short of fourth place in a sprint to the finish.

Colin Elliott pushing hard

Katie Madden leaving the transition

First climb of the women's final

Women's Results
1. Carleton (23:20.5)
2. Nipissing (23:54.9)
3. Guelph (24:08.2)
5. Waterloo (24:55.3)

Men's Results
1. Carleton (20:56.4)
2. Guelph (21:12.1)
3. Nipissing (21:27.2)
13. Waterloo (23:28.5)

Full results can be found at http://zone4.ca/results.asp?id=6379