Recap
A Great Finish to the Season! 2nd Place at the Caledonia Invitational
Caledonia Invitational
Caledonia Invitational Medalist--Sean Rice (2nd GS), Brayden Smith (6th GS & 9th SL) Luke Shuster (11th SL & 14th GS) Tyler Dean (4th GS&4th SL), Mya Baldwin (11th SL&14th GS), Kyleigh Thompson (15th GS), Cohen Broomfield (15th SL)and DJ Potgeter (11th GS
Thompsonville, MI — Friday the Scots traveled north to Crystal Mountain to start what is planned to be a new tradition for the team, the Caledonia Invitational. "The weather at home has just not cooperated, we have only been able to hold two conference races and I wanted more for my skiers so I looked into moving our final conference race to Crystal Mountian but there were scheduling conflicts with most of the teams in the SWMSC. At that point, I decided to book the race and invite a group of teams that we race against during the season. Plainwell TK was the only conference school that could make the date work and we were excited to introduce them to the Invitational experience and enjoy racing with Benzie Central, Onekama, Maple City Glenn Lake and Grand Rapids Christian---which is a pretty tough field of teams. GR Christian qualified both of its teams for the State Finals and there were a bunch of State Finals Individual qualifiers on the teams that attended the race. Our main goal was to make sure that everyone's JV or B Teams has one more chance to race and we were successful."
Caledonia's guys got off to a great start, winning the Giant Slalom with just 23 points. Sean Rice took 2nd, Tyler Dean took 4th, Brayden Smith place 6th and DJ Potgeter finished 11th to round out the scorers. Luke Shuster place 14th and the top fifteen places medaled at this race. The Scots B Team also skied well in GS with 8 of the top 10 JV scores. Derick Prichard led the way with a 2nd place finish, Peter Calhoun took 3rd, James Diegal placed 4th and Charlie Doan rounded out the B Team scoring with 5th place.
"One of the big reasons I set up this race was so my B Team could have another opportunity to race. These guys are extremely dedicated and have been pushing themselves all season to improve and today we got to see all the growth on the Big Stage of an Invitational on Buck, which is a great ski racing venue."
The second half of the race for the guys was slalom and even though the team had a couple minor hiccups they skied well enough to finish the meet in 2nd place and only 2 pts behind Onekama and ahead of State Finals bound GR Christian. "Today was the first time we have beaten Gr Christian with the boys team. We have been close a few times but they have a great team and program, who we race with in our middle school conference and throughout the year in our high school schedule. I am very proud of how well we skied today--these guys left everything on the slopes today and did not hold back at all!)
Scoring in slalom for the varsity were Tyler Dean 4th, Brayden Smith 9th, Luke Shuster 11th and Sean Rice 18th. The B Team also skied slalom well and scoring for them were Cohen Broomfield 2nd, James Diegel 4th, Charlie Doan 5th, and Peter Calhoun 6th.
Detailed stats will be uploaded soon.