FARMINGTON – To come barreling down a hill at excessive speeds with two slippery pieces of fiberglass affixed to plastic boots while dodging plastic poles sticking out of icy snow takes confidence.
To be sure, having your own hill probably helps, as does starting to defy death at an early age, but confidence is not something that is learned. It is inherent, and it is absorbed after hours and, in some cases, years of observation.
In the Farmington area, and specifically at Titcomb Mountain, children have watched for a generation, and all they have seen is winning, a sight that breeds confidence and in turn more winning.
“It’s all of us,” said Mt. Blue skier Keelin Cyr, the lone senior on this year’s girls’ Alpine team at the perennial state champion school. “We all have a confidence about doing this.”
“If one of us falls, there is always one more behind us to pick us up,” added junior Heidi Judkins. “It’s just an attitude of knowing how to win, knowing you have one of the top teams every time.”
Since 1992, Mt. Blue has won 11 girls’ state skiing titles and seven boys’ titles, thanks in large part to its Alpine team. This is not to say that the Nordic team hasn’t done its share at all. In fact, the trails at Titcomb are among the toughest in Maine, and train the Nordic team well for all of its meets across the region.
But the skiers with a death wish – those who glide with gravity and drop several hundred feet in less than a minute – are the skiers whom Mt. Blue can attribute much of its success.
“It all starts with having this mountain,” said Mt. Blue Alpine coach Rick Hardy. “I remember starting here when I was 5-years-old myself, and I remember watching the high school kids race. You can get involved here back in kindergarten right through your sixth- and seventh-grade years and we just hope that a small percentage of those that do get involved stick with it. That’s where we get our kids.”
Never mind that Titcomb, which hosted this year’s final day of the KVAC meet, is in the team’s backyard, but it gives Mt. Blue a training facility at all times of the day. A quick glance around the small base lodge at the foot of the slalom run finds more plaques than you can count, most of them etched with the word “champion.”
“Being in the gates, being able to practice for this is one of the biggest things we do,” said Judkins.
Last weekend, the Mt. Blue girls capped off a dominating season in the KVAC with a 31-86 victory over Class B power Maranacook at the KVAC championships. The closest Class A school was Oxford Hills in third with 130 points.
The boys, meanwhile, suffered an upset loss to Maranacook when two of the Cougars’ skiers clipped a gate in their first runs. The two skiers, brothers Chet and Pete Farnum, still finished 42nd and 48th with blazing second runs. The bigger story, though, was the emergence of No. 5 skier Alex Prentiss and No. 6 skier Reid Bond, who both finished in the top 17 to give Mt. Blue a chance at besting Maranacook. The Black Bears nipped the Cougars by a single point.
“It’s still kind of a feather in our cap to know that people are gunning for us,” said Hardy.
The rest of Class A will again be after the Cougars when the season wraps up at Mt. Abram for the state championship meet. Mt. Blue will go in as the favorite in both the boys’ and the girls’ races. The closest Class A team to the boys’ team in the KVAC meet was Leavitt, which finished 41 points back of the Cougars.
And as for a separation between the girls’ team and boys’ team? Forget it, said Cyr.
“There is no separation,” said Cyr. “We’ve all been skiing with these guys forever, ever since we were little. I’m the only senior girl and there are three senior boys, and we grew up skiing and racing together. The same is true with all of the other classes.”
They race together, they practice together, and they win championships together. It’s as simple as flying down a hill strapped to two skis while holding fiberglass poles and dodging flags.
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