Snowsports State Champions
Last week, 27 Senior School and 11 Prep students travelled to Perisher to compete in the 2025 Interschools Snowsports NSW State Championships across all available disciplines. Top six teams and top 20 individuals would earn qualification to the Australian Nationals next week, the stakes were high.
Monday was a great start to the week with a couple of podium results and plenty of awesome racing on Day 1. Our Division 4 Alpine team of Theodore Karedis, Adrian Zhang, Callum Saurajen and Alex Grieve won Team Bronzeand the Division 1 Snowboard Slopestyle team of Noah Shepherd, George Lane and Neo Pressley smashed Team Silver, Noah winning Individual Silver.
In Division 1 Ski Slopestyle, Ari Ganassin placed a solid 10th, in Division 2 Slopestyle Snowboard Asher Shepherd competed well placing 14th. In Division 2 Slopestyle Ski, Ben Rose and William Thompson placed 6th.
In Division 5 Alpine, Lachlan Barnes placed 56th in a massive field and in Division 6 Ski Cross, Jasper Li placed 52nd.
Tuesday was a long day, it was an achievement in itself to get through the Slopestyle events, they took ages…
In Division 3 Slopestyle Ski, Oli Klaas and Tom Rose placed 12th, in Division 3 Slopestyle Snowboard, Oscar Hanson, Charlie Pressley and Joshua Kingsmill ranked 6th.
In Division 4 Moguls, the A Team of Theodore Karedis, Callum Saurajen and Adrian Zhang placed 7th, the B Team of Frederick Muldoon and Alex Grieve placed 12th.
In Division 6 Alpine, Justin Yang, Hudson Vakili, Jasper Li and Luca Di Giovani placed 7th.
Henry Dockrill had a great time at Biathlon, hitting all the targets. Henry is the first competitor to participate in this non-interschools event, it will be great to see more approach this next year.
Wednesday saw the Cross Country (XC), our Division 1 Classic team of Alex Yu, Taj Robertson and Max L’Orange ranked crossed the line in 3rd for Team Bronze. In Division 2 Classic, Lachlan Boys ranked 8th. In Division 3, Jackson Sprott, Jake Mears, and Oli Klaas placed 26th for Team Bronze, Henry Dockrill placed 44th and Hudson Williams placed 47th. William Sprott ranked 4th individual in Division 4 – great work.
In the XC Relay, our Division 1 team of Alex, Max and Taj placed 7th and our Division 3 Team of Jackson, Jake and Oli placed 7th. Well done to all of the boys who stretched themselves to participate in Cross Country, such tough events!
In Division 1 Moguls, Harry Dubenec and Ari Ganassin placed a very strong 5th.
Our Division 2 SB GS Team of Asher Shepherd and Cyan Couch also ranked 5th.
In Division 3 Snowboard Cross, our A Team of Charlie Pressley, Oscar Hanson and Joshua Kingsmill placed 15th.
Thursday had very bleak racing conditions, amazing the contrast the bit of rain made to the amazing snow that we had in the first few days of the State Championships. The Alpine races were reduced to one run which made it very difficult for the competitors and the highly anticipated Sun Valley X course was moved to Jump City due to lack of snow. Visibility was extremely poor. Still, some great racing was done as well as strong results from our team.
In Division 1 Snowboard GS, Noah Shepherd, George Lane and Neo Pressley ranked a strong 5th and in SB X they stepped up to 4th, qualifying for Nationals in all of their events.
In Division 2 SB GS, Asher Shepherd and Cyan Couch also placed 5th and in SB X Asher, Cyan and Lachlan Boys placed 11th.
In Division 2 Alpine we succumbed to the challenge of only one run, with one of our guys falling. William Thompson placed 11th, Ben Rose 26th and Luca Ewen DNF.
In Division 3 Moguls, Oli Klaas and Tom Rose placed 9th.
On the final day of events, Friday, Division 1 Alpine, on a sketchy, rutted course, our team of Charlie Kovacs, Nick Yates, Angus Motteram and Taj Robertson placed 5th. A great job here, so many competitors crashed. In the top 6 National qualifying teams, Snowy Mountains Grammar was the only team not to have a DSQ or DNF and SMG and Barker were the only teams to have all four competitors finish! Wild…
In Division 1 Ski Cross, Charlie, Nick and Angus placed 4th, 0.24 seconds off third. Charlie placing a strong Individual 5th.
In Division 2 Ski Cross, William Thompson, Luca Ewen and Ben Rose placed 6th.
In Division 2 Moguls, Ben Rose placed 23rd.
In Division 3 Alpine, Oli Klaas, Jake Mears, Tom Rose and Archer Bailey placed 8th.
Well done to all of the boys, we enjoyed some great results this week and have a good selection of invitations to Nationals, which is held next week in Mt Buller, Victoria. Thank you to all of the parents for your assistance managing and volunteering and thanks to Mr Massey for all of his support on and off the mountain!!
Mr WJ Payne (‘94)
MIC Snowsports