Skiers fly across icy snow at CEC Invitational

Sleet falling on top of snow two days before the Lumberjacks invitational ski meet made for a fast race Tuesday.

In fact, Cloquet senior Aidan Ripp may have set a record for the fastest 5.5K ever at Pine Valley, finishing the loop in 13:22.6, a full minute and 15 seconds ahead of the next competitor, Sam Stertz of Grand Rapids.

The typically modest Ripp said he was fortunate Tuesday.

"I got pretty lucky, because I didn't run into anybody at any bad times," he said. "I've definitely had races where you catch slow people right as you're on a hairpin turn or whatever."

Blonde hair flowing out of his skinny ski hat, and sweat and his spittle frozen to his face, Ripp handled the challenging conditions at his home course like a pro. Which he's aiming for, as the senior is a member of the Junior National Nordic combined team, a sport which combines both ski jumping with Nordic skiing.

"Pretty amazing time," first-year head coach Arne Maijala said. "We're going to try to check the books to see if it was a record. He was definitely moving."

A total of nine teams participated in Tuesday's race, with just under 350 skiers participating, from junior high students through high school. The race could have been even bigger, Maijala said, noting that fellow Section 7 teams Duluth Marshall and Ely were both missing Tuesday.

"It's really awesome we were able to have a meet here, because Mother Nature has kind of prevented it from happening consistently," Maijala said, noting that last year's meet was canceled due to a snowstorm the day before, and the previous year's was canceled because the temperatures were too low to race. "It's a great environment to ski."

Ripp wasn't the only member of the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys Nordic ski team to ski well Tuesday. CEC had five skiers finish in the top 12 of the boys' race, with Benjamin Bauer taking third in 15:08.3, Josh Sanders taking fifth in 15:17.6, Blaine Bong taking ninth in 15:36.2, and A.J. Maijala taking 11th in 15:40.3. Fellow varsity skiers Cale Prosen and Spencer Hoeffling took 20th and 21st place, followed by Henry Slater (27th) and Nick Litke (31st).

"I think this may have been the fastest high school race here, ever," Ripp said later, when he was talking over the race with his teammates outside the chalet at Pine Valley. "In terms of just flat-out speed, because it was just so icy."

Bauer couldn't compare his time, so Tuesday's was an automatic PR on the 5.5K course at Pine Valley."The last time we had a race here, me, AJ and Josh did the junior high 2.5K race," Bauer said. "But it was extremely fast, faster than what I've been doing on just the 5K [races]."

The icy conditions also led to lots of falls. Bauer and Ripp didn't fall, but Sanders and Maijala did. Maijala said he knocked the wind out of himself when he fell, and Sanders said his fall was more of an entanglement.

"A Proctor kid went down right in front of me, I was drafting off of him, and I couldn't get out of the way so I went right over him," Sanders said. "But it took me like 3 seconds to get back up. It's just lost momentum that you can't really measure."

With scores based on the top four finishers, the Cloquet boys team finished in first place with 386 points, ahead of second-place Grand Rapids (374), which was followed by Duluth East with 367 and Mesabi East with 343.

The varsity boys weren't the only ones who had good races Tuesday.

Senior Brita Mowers was the top finisher for the CEC girls' varsity team, finishing in 17th place in a time of 19:04.4. Cloquet eighth-grader Charlotte Ripp finished two places behind Mowers. Right behind Ripp was CEC's Andrea Hille in 20th, with CEC sophomore Elsa Mowers in 21st. The younger Ripp is also on the Junior National Nordic combined women's team.

Sophomore Nate Bong took first place in the boys' junior varsity race, in a time of 16:44.8, a little more than a minute behind his big brother's time. Bennett Hille took fourth in the JV race, and Jack Slater and Noah Strand took 10th and 11th, respectively.

The top JV girls skier was senior Kelly Lorenz - a first-year skier who made the switch from hockey - who finished in 21st place.

There were no medals Tuesday, as usual. The top three winners in each category received a grapefruit for their efforts, with the rest of the top 10 taking home an orange.

Coach Maijala gave lots of credit to support staff and volunteers for helping make the meet happen. Assistant and volunteer coaches helped organize the meet and the skiers, parents organized and brought concessions, former coaches and parents manned the starting and finish line, the timing shed, icy spots on the trails, fire pits and the parking lot.

The city did a nice job of grooming the trail, in challenging conditions, he said.

Sanders said it was nice skiing at home, because he knew exactly how much energy to exert, and where. Aidan Ripp added that it helps to be familiar with the course, which features a lot of technical downhills, plus a giant hill at the start, which can impact racers unfamiliar with the trails at Pine Valley.

"I think the best thing about this course is the pines," said Sanders. "It really owns up to its name in the sense that the scenery is pretty good."

"And pine needles and pine cones are everywhere," added Bauer with a laugh.