They won every race in their regular season. They were favorites to win a title. But 48 hours before Thursday’s Division I Alpine ski championships, things began to unravel for the boys on the Concord High team, and they never really got better.
The Crimson Tide lost its No. 2 racer to COVID-19 concerns on Tuesday. Then, Concord saw two of its five skiers fall during the morning giant slalom runs on Thursday and had its top skier, Kevin McDonough, disqualified in the afternoon slalom run after allegedly missing a gate at Gunstock Mountain in Gilford.
McDonough did finish first in the GS race, but Concord wound up fifth as a team. Bedford won the title with 690 points and Keene was runner-up with 657. Bishop Guertin (624) took third followed by Winnacunnet (596) and Concord (585).
“We would have loved to get first because we had the team to do it this year,” Tide coach George Golden said, “but I guess that’s ski racing. You want everyone to finish and stand up, but sometimes they don’t.”
Concord didn’t even have everyone start. On Tuesday, Golden learned that Neil Shea, a senior captain and the team’s No. 2 skier, had a COVID-19 exposure and would be ineligible to compete at the D-I race. The exposure happened at Concord High and Shea has since tested negative, but protocols dictated that he could not compete on Thursday.
“I think losing Neil took the wind out of the sails for the boys,” Golden said. “I walked onto the bus in the morning and it was quiet. I was like, ‘What’s wrong you guys, it’s state championship today, let’s get fired up.’ But they were like, ‘Neil isn’t here, we’re not going to do that great.’”
With Shea, Concord had four strong skiers capable of putting up big points (five skiers compete, the top four score). That gave the Tide a definitive edge over the other top teams in D-I, which have three top-level skiers at the most. Without Shea, Concord lost its advantage and its margin for error.
“Going in we had high hopes for this season, but after losing Neil we were kind of down a little bit,” McDonough said. “But we knew that we still had a chance if we could all ski four clean runs.”
Those hopes quickly crashed at Gunstock when freshman Brett McDonough, Kevin’s younger brother, and Davis Foley both fell during the morning GS runs. That meant Concord could only score three skiers in the GS as opposed to four, and the Tide’s hopes of winning a team title were essentially gone. The younger McDonough had the ninth best time in the run he completed, and Davis had the 19th best in his completed run, so chances are good Concord would have claimed the team title if either of them had finished both runs.
Still, Kevin McDonough stayed focused and recorded the best times in both GS runs for a combined time of 1:05.77, comfortably ahead of second-place finisher Will Whitcher from Exeter (1:07.42). Not only was McDonough trying to forget about the team’s bad luck that day, he was also trying to block out memories from last year’s D-I championships when he fell in three of the four runs.
“I tried to go into today with a clear head and not think about what happened last year,” said McDonough, who won the D-I GS and slalom championships as a sophomore. “So, I was really happy with my performance in the morning.”
In the afternoon slalom, a race official judged that McDonough straddled a gate during his first run. There was a debate on the call (video showed McDonough did not straddle, but video is not allowed to alter officiating decisions at NHIAA events), and McDonough actually thought his first run had been ruled eligible by the time he was in the starting gates for his second run. He recorded the fastest time in that second run, but his first run was eventually ruled out so he was disqualified from the race.
“I don’t think I did (straddle the gate), but it is what it is,” McDonough said. “The silver lining with that is that Read Merrill, a sophomore on the team, would have placed eighth if I had won, but since I was disqualified he finished seventh and gets to go to the Meet of Champions with me, my younger brother and Savanah Shannon.”
The top seven finishers in both disciplines qualified for the Feb. 18 Meet of Champions at Cannon Mountain. So, with McDonough disqualified from the slalom, Merrill went from eighth to seventh in the standings.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from Kevin than that kind of reaction,” Golden said. “He has a great attitude and he’s a great kid, that’s why he’s a captain.”
Brett McDonough finished sixth in the GS to earn his trip to the MOC. Shannon won both the GS and slalom races at Wednesday’s girls’ D-I championships to punch her ticket to the NHIAA season-ending races.
Jacob Ryder scored in both races for Concord on Thursday, finishing 33rd in the GS and 34th in the slalom. And after falling in the morning GS run, Davis Foley earned points for the Tide in the slalom with a 34th place result.
Division IIBow’s Eli Gadbois took third in the slalom and Patrick Wachsmuth was fourth in the GS as the Falcons took third as a team at the D-II boys’ Alpine championships at Mount Cranmore in North Conway.
Hanover claimed the team title with 755.5 points to finish ahead of Kennett (736 points) and Bow (705.5), which won the D-II title in 2020, the Falcons first year in the division. Hollis Brookline was fourth with 697 points and Oyster River (632) rounded out the top five. Pembroke Academy (508) was 10th.
Gadbois and Wachsmuth qualified for Thursday’s MOC with their top results. Connor Wachsmuth just missed out in both the slalom, where he finished eighth, and the GS, where he was ninth (the top seven qualify).
Theodore Pfeifle scored in both races for Bow, finishing 23rd in the slalom and 38th in the GS. Bow’s other points came from Caleb Stonecipher (15th slalom) and Patrick Wachsmuth’s was 11th place result in the GS.
Spencer Raymond (43rd GS, 35th slalom), Harrison Army (52nd GS, 40th slalom) and Owen Thomas (54th GS, 36th slalom) all scored in both races for Pembrok e. Ben Sporcic (43rd GS) and Ryan Sporcic (51st sla lom) also scored points for the Spartans.