MARS HILL — If the Spruce Mountain girls’ Alpine ski team is going to repeat its state championship feat of a year ago, it’s going to have to come from behind.
Again.
Allison Acritelli paced the Phoenix in the giant slalom event at Big Rock Mountain on Monday with a fourth-place finish and the team accumulated 61 points in the team competition, good for third place after the first day in Aroostook County.
The Phoenix are in third position, trailing first-place Yarmouth by 25 points and second-place Fort Kent by eight.
Margaret Elder led the Clippers with a second-place finish in the GS, two seconds off the winning pace set by Greenville’s Shelby Cowin.
Yarmouth also placed skiers in eighth (Emi Ruth), 11th (Madeline Marston) and 15th (Emma Marston) positions to take a commanding lead.
Alisha Guimond was Kort kent’s top skier on the day in third place.
The other placing skiers for Spruce Mountain were Julia Pomeroy (10th), Bailey Coates (20th) and Adria Plourde (27th).
Maranacook is in fourth place overall as a team with 66 points, five back of Spruce Mountain, while Lake Region, paced by Paige Davis’ fifth-place run, is in the fifth team position.
In the boys’ race, Cape Elizabeth holds as commanding a lead over Yarmouth there as Yarmouth does in the girls’ contest.
The Capers placed three skiers in the top seven, including GS champion Ian Geikie, to build a comfortable 34-61 lead over the Clippers after the first day.
Geikie’s winning time of 1:26.20 was almost two seconds faster than runner up Curtis Gauvin of Mountain Valley. Maranacook’s Robbie McKee placed third.
In the team competition, Fort Kent sits in third position, eight points back of Yarmouth. Lake Region is in fourth spot with 88 points, followed by Maranacook with 90. Mountain Valley is in eighth, Spruce Mountain in ninth, Gray-New Gloucester in 12th and Telstar in 13th position after the first day.
The slalom event is slated for Tuesday morning at Big Rock, after which the Class B Alpine state championship will be awarded.
The remaining ski events for Class B and all of Class A’s races are slated now for Thursday and Friday after the forecasted warm weather forced organizers to delay some of the races.
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