The legacy of greatness continues to grow for the Concord High Nordic ski teams.
After yet another Division I championship for the girls’ and boys’ teams on Monday afternoon at Great Glen Trails, the Crimson Tide will need to clear more room in its trophy case.
The Concord teams made a clean sweep of the freestyle and classic events as the boys beat out Bedford (760) with an overall team score of 780, and the girls ran away with their own team title, scoring 778 points to edge second-place Bishop Guertin. The championships were the ninth straight for Concord, which has collected 20 total over the last 11 seasons.
“I think it’s been really incredible over the past nine or 10 years what this program has been able to put together,” said Concord senior Jamie Wilkes, who paced the Tide boys with top-two finishes in both events. “It doesn’t look like they will be dying down anytime soon.”
Wilkes was the story of the day for the boys’ team, which placed five skiers in the top 10 of the freestyle race and landed six in the top 10 of the classic. Wilkes breezed his way through the classic with a time of 10 minutes and 37.3 seconds – nearly 30 seconds faster than teammate Nate Nichols, who finished second overall in 11:06.2. Cam Brochu (fourth), Nino Tomas (fifth), Colin Conery (seventh) and Eli Boesch-Dining (10th) rounded out the team finishes for the Tide.
“It’s like every race day where the big story is the story of the team doing well and there are little victories and little defeats with certain kids having good races and some maybe a little bit disappointed,” Concord Coach Sam Evans-Brown said. “The big picture is, yeah, we’re super happy with the result.”
Wilkes nearly took home an individual title in both events if not for a last-second lunge by Bedford’s Michael Giraldi in the freestyle race. Giraldi beat out Wilkes by the narrowest of margins as he crossed the finish line in 9:44.3 with Wilkes right behind him at 9:44.6.
“You lunge out with your boot (at the end) and Mike (Giraldi) beat Jamie by a boot throw,” Evans-Brown said. “If Jamie had maybe lunged a little more aggressively, he might of won it. But again, that’s racing.”
Wilkes added: “I was happy with how I performed. I would of loved to have been a half of a second ahead and won it, but second place is not bad. … That was a good race by Mike Giraldi from Bedford. We just kind of battled it out the whole time and he got the best of me at the end, but it was a good race.”
Thanks to first-place finishes in both races for senior captain Jess Nelson, the Tide girls’ team could not be caught. Nelson was the only skier in the classic race to finish in under 13 minutes with a time of 12:51.4 and won the freestyle – a race where Concord placed six skiers in the top eight – by more than 29 seconds with a time of 11:01.2.
“It was really great and definitely great to see the payoff for all the hard work I put in all season training with the team,” Nelson said. “They really pulled their weight as well so I think it was really a team win today. It was wonderful.”
Other strong finishers for the girls included sophomore Heather Deacon’s second-place effort in the classic and fourth-place finish in the freestyle, as well as Brenna McNamara, who finished top-six in both events.
“I came into this as being a little dismissive of sort of the whole division system. It’s kind of arbitrary because you wind up in this division, which is based on the size of the school and not a great indicator of how great your team is,” Evans-Brown said. “That said, the takeaway for me today is this a huge thing to stand on the podium and be recognized by your peers. I think the kids, they look forward to it in a way that I didn’t quite grasp until today.”
(Jay McAree can be reached at 369-3371 or jmcaree@cmonitor.com.