Alpine skiing: Lucas Golden sweeps GS and slalom titles, leads Concord to 4th in D-I
Published: 02-16-2024 11:28 PM |
Lucas Golden was hoping to be on the podium. He ended up standing on top of it. Twice.
Golden, a freshman, won both the giant slalom and the slalom titles at the NHIAA Division I boys’ Alpine skiing championships on Friday at Crotched Mountain, leading Concord to fourth place as a team.
On a blustery day on a tough course, consistency was hard to come by, but Golden put together four solid runs, winning the morning GS with a combined time of 1 minute, 12.31 seconds, and the afternoon slalom in 1:11.40. His times led to relatively comfortable victories over Bedford’s Luke Purnell (1:13.25), who was second in the GS and Keene’s Watson Ferguson (1:12.88) who was runner-up in the slalom.
“Pretty amazing as a freshman to win (both disciplines),” said Concord head coach George Golden, who is also Lucas’ father. “He skied four unbelievable runs, I’m really proud of him. They were two challenging courses that they set today and you really had to be on.”
Portsmouth (746 points) won the team championship with Keene (704) finishing second, ending Bedford’s streak at three consecutive D-I team titles. The Bulldogs (687) finished third, just ahead of the fourth-place Crimson Tide (682).
Senior Brett McDonough (12th in both GS and slalom) narrowly missed Meet of Champions qualifying for Concord, finishing just outside the top 10 places that advance.
Seniors Carter Pratt (20th slalom, 23rd GS), Pablo Winn (24th slalom) and Noah Cascio (41st GS) also skied well to score for the Tide.
For Concord, finishing fourth out of 16 D-I teams is a big accomplishment.
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“There’s four seniors on this team, three of them never had any ski racing experience before they joined the team at Concord High School (McDonough is the one exception),” coach Golden said. “They’ve been going against kids who have been racing long before they got to high school. … This year the competition has been so much stronger in Division I. Carter had a great day. Brett skied amazing. The boys should be pretty proud of their fourth-place finish.”
Bow’s Seth Lowne finished seventh in both the GS and the slalom to lead the Falcons to third place in the Division II boys’ Alpine state championship at Cranmore Mountain on Thursday.
Hanover won its fourth straight title with 762 points, with Kennett (748), Bow (666), ConVal (646) and Hollis-Brookline (628) rounding out the top five.
Pembroke (510) finished 10th out of 12 teams.
Hanover’s Nick Reiss won the GS, leading a 1-2-3 sweep of the podium for his team, and teammate Andrew McGuire took the slalom.
Collin Atwell (13th GS, 17th slalom), Ian Soucy (23rd slalom, 26th GS), Aaron Barrieau (25th GS) and Asher Wilkening (41st slalom) were the other scoring skiers for Bow.
Colby Pope (27th slalom, 38th GS), Dylan Hawkins (28th slalom, 40th GS), Sam Nereson (45th slalom, 58th GS) and Doug Miller (52nd slalom, 59th GS) were the top four skiers for Pembroke.