With just two carnivals left on the schedule, the Colby men’s and women’s nordic ski teams put on their best performances of the year at the Dartmouth College Ski Carnival this past weekend. The men took fifth out of 12 teams on both days, while the women placed ninth on Friday and improved to a fifth on Saturday.

In Friday’s 10-kilometer freestyle race, captain Wyatt Fereday ’11 led the men’s squad with a 26:09.5 slide time over the course, good for 22nd place overall. Teammate Jake Barton ’13 was on Fereday’s tail, placing 23rd with a time of 26:10.6, while John Dixon ’14 (42nd, 27:09.1), Levin Zars ’14 (44th, 27:35.8), Paco DeFrancis ’14 (63rd, 29:00.8) and Jared Supple ’13 (65th, 29:38.8) rounded out the scoring for the Mules. For the women’s five-kilometer freestyle race, Lizzie Anderson ’14 took 30th, and co-captain Olga Golovkina ’13 took 32nd as Colby placed ninth, while co-captain Missy Krause ’12 (49th, 15:54.6), Molly Susla ’13 (52nd, 16:06.5), Emma Donohoe ’14 (55th, 16:30.0) and Maeve McGovern ’14 (59th, 16:57.7) ensured that despite a bottom-half team-wide ranking, no Mule fell below 60th overall. Friday’s top two teams, for both the men and the women, were powerhouses Dartmouth and the University of Vermont (UVM).

On Saturday, both teams took fifth in their respective classic mass start races—15-kilometer for the women and 20-kilometer for the men—skiing the same course as on Friday. The men’s race covered 2200 vertical feet with just two 10-kilometer laps, with switchbacks to reach the plateaus. In the men’s race, Barton took 16th (1:03.34.7), Zars 25th (1:05.01.2), Fereday 26th (1:05.03.5), DeFrancis 37th (1:06:10.5), Dixon 44th (1:07:17.8), and Supple 50th (1:09:40.8). Golovkina led again for the women, finishing 10th with a time of 53:18.4. She was followed by teammates Krause (27th, 55:40.2), Susla (38th, 57:24.1), McGovern (43rd, 58:16.6), Anderson (46th, 59:22.9) and Donohoe (48th, 1:00:21.9). Dartmouth and UVM were once again the top two teams in the race.

After the race, per tradition, the participating teams handed out valentines to one another. Colby’s men’s squad, however, is famous not only for its valentines but also for its nude calendar, which is given to every competing women’s team.

“It’s always great to race at Oak Hill and hand out valentines afterward,” said Fereday. “Some people write love poems, some sing to their crushes, some give out treats. Most valentines are dirty and highly sexual.”

“And I think our men's team calendar was a big hit,“ he added.

This weekend, Colby races at the Middlebury Carnival before returning to Maine at the end of February for the Bates Carnival in Rumford.