Girls race to second place and captain Eli Newell leads boys with 2nd place overall.
Andover Nordic raced in a skate sprint tournament hosted by St. Paul's at the Proctor course. The tournament consisted of three rounds of races on a 1.4k course which sorted skiers into their final standings based on results of each race.
The girls were up first and captain Posie Millett, Claire de Saint Phalle, Nikita Muromcew, and Kate Pfister all made it into the top tier of races while Christina Li and Amelia Vinton raced their way into the second tier. In the second round, Millett raced her way into the A final where she finished 6th overall, a personal best for her. De Saint Phalle fell during the B final finishing in 12th place overall, while Pfister and Muromcew finished together in the 16th and 17th overall in the C final. Li finished 24th overall and Vinton 29th. When the final scores were added up, Andover came in second behind Holderness out of the 6 teams competing.
The boys raced second and were led by stellar performances by captain Eli Newell and Sam Gallaudet who made it to the A final and Remy de Saint Phalle who earned his way into the D final. The rest of the Andover boys put in great early round performances too to stay alive in the brackets towards the final. In the A final, Newell led early and was just caught by the top NMH skier towards the end. Still, he finished in 2nd place overall, the best result for an Andover boy in quite some time. Close on his heels in the final was Gallaudet who finished in 5th place only a few seconds back from Newell. De Saint Phalle finished 26th overall. The rest of the Andover boys had good races as well with Henry Hearle and Tyler Yung placing 46 and 47, Nico von Eckartsberg placing 49th, Samson Zhang 52, Harry Whitman 53, and Jeremy Zhou 64th. Overall, the boys finished in 4th place out of 8 teams.
Next week Andover travels to Vermont Academy.