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Coghlan takes freestyle title

Dave Shively

— The 14 freestyle skiers ages 12 and younger didn’t need any luck at the Rocky Mountain Freestyle Development Championships at Durango Mountain Resort.

Wearing their matching green “team steam” T-shirts, plenty of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club athletes cruised into the top 20 of the three-discipline competition (slopestyle, big air and moguls).

“Even our kids that didn’t land on the podium were really successful,” Winter Sports Club freestyle ski coach Nate Bird said. “Pretty much everyone had their best runs of the year, and all 14 skied to their potential.”



Codi Coghlan landed a huge spread eagle jump in the big air competition to catapult her to an overall combined points win. Ainslee Yeager won the J-4 slopestyle competition to take fourth place overall and Tariel Weekslynn took 15th overall.

On the boys’ side, Brad Hoefer took Steamboat’s top spot with an 11th-place overall finish after grabbing third in the J-4 slopestyle.



Balan Symons won the J-6 moguls and Sam Harrelson took third in the J-4 moguls that Bird called “the most competitive field of the weekend.”

Mack Noel (14th) and Nathan Parks (20th) also landed in the top 20 overall.

Steamboat’s J-3 Alpine racers (ages 13 and 14) had consistently impressive performances at the Rocky Central J-3 Junior Olympics March 13 to 17 in Aspen.

“Overall, we had a really great week and every day we had someone in the top 10,” Winter Sports Club head J-3 Alpine ski coach Dusty Matheson said. “On the giant slalom day, the women skied really well. We had six in the top 20 and 5 in the top 15, which is unbelievably huge. On the men’s side, one day we had all of them stacked in the top 25, which is nice considering there was over 80 competing in the field.”

Linnea Dixson was awarded the Bibbo Award for the female athlete who moved up the most spots throughout the week (130), and Conner Bernard was second on the male list (176 spots).

Greta Byrne posted Steamboat’s top finishes, earning fifth in both the downhill and super G and Maria Hillenbrand took fifth in the slalom.

Cassady Daley and Gracie Whelihan barely missed qualification for the J-3 Junior Olympics, finishing third and fourth overall, respectively, at the Council Cup from March 8 to 10 at Ski Cooper.


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