Complete Results
Team Scores

HOUGHTON, Mich. (csssaints.com) -- Less than two hours after the St. Scholastica men posted one of their most competitive team showings of the season, a stint of sunshine and transforming snow conditions sent the CSS women out on the course into a catastrophic situation.

With nearly a foot of new snow fallen in the previous 24 hours, the conditions held up for kick wax working to propel the men's skis, but a period of roughly 20 minutes of sunshine turned the new snow into slick, icy tracks.  In classic ski racing, skiers ski in the same track.  When the track gets saturated with wet snow near freezing, the track "glazes" almost like a ice rink.  The problem with the situation is that anything that can grip the snow will pick up snow and form ice under the foot, while anything that doesn't ice up in the kick zone of the ski, absolutely has no grip on the snow.  Further, any wax that grips the icy track picks up loose snow outside the track and forms a block of ice under the skiers' feet.

When these conditions happen--which is rare--to be competitive, a skier must compete on a special waxless racing ski with a kick zone that has a hairy material that grips the ice and hopefully doesn't ice up like kick waxes do. 

The conditions in the course of 20 minutes, flipped from the waxable track the men had so much success on, to needing the "hairy" waxless skis being the only possibility of being competitive on the day.  The problem for the Saints; they had one pair of such skis for 6 female athletes.  

With Sharmila Ahmed (Savage, Minn./Burnsville HS) on a string of top 10 finishes on the season and in contention for NCAA Championship qualification, it was clear who would go on the one pair of skis that might have a chance of working.  Ahmed headed out on the course only to find that the skis perhaps didn't fit her very well.  While she could glide, the skis were nearly not kickable for the sophomore.  She struggled around the course trying to make the skis work, finishing a disappointing 18th on the day in a time of 19:06.5.

Despite the disappointment, Ahmed got off easy.  In an attempt to give the skiers a chance to kick up the challenging hills, the Saints coaches threw a Hail Mary and applied a stickier wax that would hopefully give them a chance.  The chance taken completely backfired and cost the Saints women the day.   As skier after skier on the Saints team hit any loose snow, their kick zones iced up and could no longer glide with a mountain of snow and ice built up on their kick zones, requiring them to stop often, and try to remove the ice and snow build up, or simply run to the finish on their skis, with no hope of gliding.  Either way, the case for the women Saints was nothing short of a fiasco with no chance at actually competing.

"It was nothing short of a disaster," said Saints head coach Chad Salmela.  "This was the single most challenging day of waxing in my career, and we simply had nothing that was working at all.  In an attempt to make it work, we got too aggressive, and that was the death of us.  I take full responsibility.  Ironically, if we would have tried a little less as a staff, we probably would have had a chance of something reasonable for a race, but without enough waxless skis that fit our skiers, we really didn't have a prayerof competing with those who had them.  It's that simple.  If we'd just left well enough alone, we would have slipped a bunch and had a chance of gliding, but that still wouldn't have given anyone a shot at the top 10.'"

As it turned out, nobody in the top of the women's field tried to compete on a waxed ski.  The top finisher on wax was Alaska's Raphaela  Sieber who dominated this event last weekend by over 15 seconds.  Sieber finished 14th, one minute and 13 seconds off the pace.

Open skier, Felicia Gesior, who is a redshirt skier from Northern Michigan, won the race in 17:34.8.  The college race was won by Alaska's Aly McPheteres, with a time 17:38.4.  Teammate, Theresia Schnurr finished second in 17:50.7.  Northern Michigan's Jordyn Ross finished third in 17:53.9.

Saints senior Sarah Allen (Duluth, Minn./Duluth East HS (Northern Michigan)), who escaped the final layer of wax that did most of the rest of the team in, by starting before the change was made, finished 27th in a time of 20:26.6.  Sophomore, Liz Peterson (Forest Lake, Minn./Forest Lake HS) finished 47th in at time of 25:03.9, to round out the Saints scoring.

Fairbanks swept the team events on the day with the women outscoring Northern Michigan, 65 to 62.  Michigan Tech finished third.  The Saints finished seventh with 21 points.

"We simply didn't have the equipment today that we needed to compete," said Salmela.  "The skis you need for conditions like this are specific to these conditions.  In seven years as a coach, we've never needed them once.  Today we did.  Only two skiers on my team have their own skis like this, and unfortunately both are men.  I have bought some pairs for the team when I could get good deals on them, but then you have the problem of ski fit.  Clearly we didn't have a pair that fit Sharmila, and we didn't have any that fit anyone else either. Most I've been able to get at a good price are fit for someone 150 pounds or heavier.  We were damned if we did, damned if we didn't.  Not much we could have done but kept everyone on what Sarah went on--which still wasn't great.  We just reacted and it cost us."

Ahmed likely needed to have a competitive day to keep her NCAA qualification hopes alive, though with one race left, she may have an outside chance.  "That's the thing that kills me as a coach on a day like today.   To have qualification come down to this--a day in which you really can't compete because of equipment.  We can't make excuses.  We just have to collectively be more prepared for these conditions in the future."

The Saints will try to rebound and finish out the season on a strong note in the NCAA Central Regional 10km freestyle mass start, Sunday.