Prep skiing story lines: Team firsts sought but just one individual champ is back

December 12, 2019 at 1:53AM
Peyton Servais of Lakeville North
Lakeville North junior Peyton Servais will try to defend her individual title in the Alpine skiing state meet. She won by five-hundreths of a second. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Forest Lake eyes

sweeping Nordic titles

The Rangers have been prominent on both the boys' and girls' Nordic scene but have never swept the team championships. Could they pull off the feat come February at Giants Ridge in Biwabik? The boys' team lost two seniors to graduation from its runner-up group of a year ago. The girls' squad returns all but one skier from its fourth-place team — the Rangers lost a third-place tiebreaker to Stillwater — in 2019. Between the two teams, they have four brother-sister combinations, two sets of brothers and one set of sisters.

St. Paul Highland Park seeks program first

Coach Brad Moening's St. Paul Highland Park squad, seeking its first girls' Nordic state championship in program history, welcomes back all seven of its skiers from its runner-up to Armstrong last season. The Scots are led by sophomore Molly Moening, Brad's daughter, who finished sixth. Central is the only St. Paul City Conference school to win the girls' team crown in 1991. Central also won three consecutive boys' titles from 1991-93. No other school in the conference has won the boys' title, either.

Lone Alpine champion returns

Lakeville North junior Peyton Servais is the only individual skiing state champion with an opportunity to defend her title in the girls' Alpine event. The other three individual champions in Alpine and Nordic graduated. Servais is a big favorite to repeat since seven of the top 10 graduated from a year ago, including second through sixth. Servais finished fourth in the state meet as a freshman.

RON HAGGSTROM

about the writer

about the writer