The Hastings Raiders Nordic Ski team took a trip to the Hyland Park Reserve in Bloomington to the Metro East Conference (MEC) Championship on Jan. 29. Both teams placed third out of five teams. The boys scored 351 points, and the girls scored 151. Individually, Linnea Ronning earned the conference championship for the girls and Micah Trost and Parker Stoltz finished sixth and seventh for the boys.
The day featured two races, the first race in the morning was a classic style Nordic race. Each racer was released from the start line every 15 seconds and their 5-kilometer time was used to determine their start time in the second race which is a pursuit style skate race.
The pursuit style race takes the fastest racer from the classic race as the starting point for the pursuit race. Then the difference of the next racers time from classic is when they get to enter the pursuit course. The best way to understand this is to see the Pursuit starting times for a race.
The Boys
Mahtomedi’s Luke Vipond won the classic race with a time of 14:03.2, Hastings’ Stoltz finished that race with a time of 16:05.3 and Trost was right behind him with a time of 16:07.8. Vipond started the Pursuit race as the leader and Stoltz waited at the start line for 2:01.1 seconds before he started and then Trost waited an additional 2.5 seconds before he started.
Team scores: Mahtomedi placed first with 370, Two Rivers second with 366, Hastings Third with 351, St. Thomas fourth with 298 and Simley fifth with 254.
Individually, Stoltz started just a few seconds ahead of Trost at the beginning of the Pursuit race, but Trost was able to overtake him sometime during the race to finish one second ahead of Stoltz. Six of the Raider racers finished in the top 20 to help the Raiders take third overall.
Place, Name, Grade, Team, Classic Time, Skate Time, Total Pursuit Time, Team Points Earned
6 Micah Trost 11 Hastings 16:36.4 14:12 30:49 75
7 Parker Stoltz 11 Hastings 16:07.8 14:42 30:50 74
11 Gabe Peterson 11 Hastings 17:20.3 15:32 32:53 70
14 Aiden Reuter 11 Hastings 17:47.1 15:34 33:22 67
16 Will Carry 11 Hastings 17:44.2 16:20 34:05 65
17 David Tireman 10 Hastings 18:43.8 15:59 34:43 64
30 Ben Schwanke 9 Hastings 21:04.5 19:26 40:31 51
31 Finn Cullen 11 Hastings 21:59.6 18:47 40:47 50
The Girls
Ronning, a junior, had the top time for the girls, finishing the Classic race with a time of 19:05.9, so she took the lead for Pursuit. Two Rivers’ Josie Miller was less than six seconds behind Ronning at the start, but after the first kilometer of the race, Ronning extended that lead to over 20 seconds. By the time the race was over, Ronning finished first with an impressive lead of 35 seconds and a total time of 35:21. The win gave Hastings 80 team points.
Freshman Danae Trost, the only other Raider girl racing, finished the Classic race with a time of 21:16.5 which put her in ninth at the start of Pursuit. She was just two-tenths of a second ahead of Mahtomedi’s Claire Lane at the start. Trost was unable to keep Lane at bay during the race, ultimately swapping positions and giving Trost the tenth-place finish with a total time of 39:24. The tenth-place finish earned Trost 71 team points for a total of 151 team points and third place for Hastings.
Two Rivers topped the team placings with a score of 379, Mahtomedi finished second with 361, the Raiders finished third with 151, Tartan fourth with 125 and Simley fifth with 68.
Sections, which is the MSHSL State qualifier, took place on Tuesday, February 4, we’ll have those results next week.