Two hundred of the West's best young alpine ski racers in the 11-14 age divisions gathered at Mammoth Mountain, Ca. March 23-25 for the Western J3 Junior Olympics and J4 Festival. They had quite a week and some local kids did well.
Hailey Ski Team second-year J4 (11-12) racer Amanda Stelling put together three solid events and came away with the J4 combined silver medal behind Sugar Bowl's gold medalist Lena Andrews. Placing fourth in J4 combined was Teagen Palmer of the Sun Valley Ski Team.
Stelling won Saturday's J4 slalom by 1.27 seconds over runner-up Andrews and also took the bronze in Sunday's giant slalom, 1.32 seconds off Andrews' top pace. Stelling was fifth in Friday's super giant slalom that Andrews won by 1.20 seconds.
Palmer was nearly as good, placing fourth in slalom, fifth in giant slalom and seventh in super giant slalom on Cornice Bowl/Fascination.
The Hailey Ski Team and SVSEF entered six other skiers in the J3 Junior Olympics (ages 13-14) and four of them placed in the combined.
Hailey's Nina Hirner (29-SG/21-SL/19-GS) was 13th and Hailey's Alexi Fitch (51-SG/20-SL/42-GS) placed 26th among the 75 girls.
Among the 94 J3 boys at Mammoth, Hailey Ski Team's Ryan Foster (58-SG/35-GS/19-SL) was 18th in combined and Tanner Farrow (58-SG/27-GS/28-SL) of the Sun Valley Ski Team ended up 22nd in the final J3 combined standings.
Sun Valley's Bergen Palmer was 25th and Chase Caulkins placed 61st in SG Friday. Palmer also placed 20th in giant slalom Saturday but was disqualified in the second run of Sunday's slalom to just miss out on a good placing in J3 combined. Caulkins didn't finish the GS and was disqualified in the slalom first run.
Another local skier at Mammoth was second-year J4 Connor Farrow of the Sun Valley Ski Team. He was sixth in SG and fifth in GS but didn't start Sunday's slalom finale.
