Alyssa Wend ’24
Copy Editor
On Feb. 8, the 5C women’s alpine team qualified for nationals. This is the first time that the women’s speed ski group has qualified as a team.
This year, the women’s alpine team was led by Zoe Hancock ’22, who won both the slalom and giant slalom events, followed by Nevada Lee ’22 and Claire Campbell ’24 who placed in the top 10. As the team had three athletes in the top 10 for both events, giving them a high enough score to beat the other women’s speed teams and qualify for the 2022 nationals.
The 5C women’s ski speed team is a part of the 5C Ski and Snowboard organization that was established in 2019 by 5C students. They focus on training members from all the 5Cs for ski competitions.
Nationals is taking place from March 6 to March 12 in Lake Placid, New York. This was an exciting chance for skiers new to racing to compete against the top teams from each state. The 5C ski team has 11 racers competing with five of the members competing as a part of the women’s alpine team.
While this was Campbell’s first season racing with the ski team, she has been an active member of the ski club since her freshman year and now has taken on an executive leadership role in the team. The 5C women’s ski club and the 5C women’s ski team are separate but closely related entities. “[They’re] run by the same folks — we’re a club-team that right now is completely self-supported … ski club tends to focus more on running events and putting on accessibility initiatives, and the team does competitions,” said Campbell. “So the team runs trainings and goes to race events, but the people between the two are pretty much the same.”
Other members of the team who competed at qualifiers weren’t new to skiing, but this was their first time racing. “I think our team is almost entirely made up of Scripps folks who have skied in the past but don’t necessarily have racing experience,” said Campbell.
While the team qualified together, not everyone attended nationals. The top five athletes were flown to New York to compete. These athletes included Zoe Hancock ’22, Claire Campbell ’24, Nevada Lee ’22, Ella Thunen ’24, and Haley Morton CMC ’25.
Not only did qualifying for nationals made history for the team, but this year brought other new changes such as bringing new students to the team, specifically Scripps students. “We’re psyched,” said Campbell. “It’s really exciting, I think it’s rare that you see a team where our women’s turnout is so high…What’s also exciting is what’s changed this year in comparison to other years is our team is almost entirely made up of Scripps folks, which is a really new change in our team demographic.”
This new involvement is due to a new push for outreach directly towards Scripps students. “Historically the club was founded and organized by Pomona students,” said Campbell. “So there’s been a lot of great outreach and folks participating from Pomona but there hasn’t been a lot of executive leadership coming from Scripps.”
The group of students that went to nationals, composed of mostly Scripps students, gave the team the ability to apply to Scripps for funding. However, because the many events for nationals were spread over a few days, the team members that attended stayed for a few days and received full funding from Scripps Associated Students to do so.
The team departed for nationals on March 5 and are currently competing in the competition. On March 9, Hancock placed third in Ski Cross.
“Ski team and ski club have open arms for whoever wants to join and we have so much excitement for anyone at any level who wants to come join in any capacity,” said Campbell. For those interested in joining either the club or team, reach out to [email protected] for more information.
Image Source: Harvey Mudd College
