Burns wins state skiing title

The West Linn Tidings, Mar 11, 2010

Perhaps the best season in school history for West Linn's ski teams got even better last week at the state championships.

McKenzie Burns capped a dominating year by winning the all around individual state championship with a dramatic win in the giant slalom and a third place finish in the slalom.

West Linn's Alec Ramsey took third place in the all around competition for the boys and, as a team, the West Linn boys finished fourth. The West Linn girls took sixth and the teams combined to finish in sixth place overall as well.

The championships began last Thursday with the slalom event.

Burns finished her first run in second place. But, in her second run, even though she turned in a faster time, she was narrowly passed by Oregon Episcopal School's Alicia McCord, who beat Burns for second place by just four hundredths of a second.

Hood River's Ricki Swearingen ran away with the competition, winning by more than three and a half seconds.

Also in the slalom, Maddie Martus took 26th while Jackie Steeh also placed in the top 50.

Then, on Friday, it was time for the giant slalom. Once again, Burns put in a solid opening run and found herself in second place.

But she was more than seven tenths of a second behind Bend's Ciara Timm. With a lot of ground to make up, Burns let loose in her second run.

Again she turned in the second fastest time behind South Eugene's Ellie Mattson but she made up the difference between her and Timm.

Burns looked up at the clock after Timm's run and saw that she edged her out by just one hundredth of a second. She had also held off Mattson by 0.23 seconds.

Martus took 36th in the giant slalom.

Burns' first and third place finishes in the two events were enough for her to claim the coveted individual title by a little more than one entire second, edging out Timm in second place and McCord in third.

Martus finished in 24th place combined and Steeh and Emily McNabb both finished in the top 50 with their combined times.

That was good enough to earn the West Linn girls sixth place as a team.

For the boys, the competition began with the giant slalom.

West Linn's Ramsey turned in the fastest time of the afternoon with his first run and found himself in the lead by just six hundredths of a second.

But, in the second run, Hood River's Colton Swearingen finished ahead of him and Ramsey took a close second.

Sean Campbell finished in 27th for the Lions in the giant slalom.

Then, in the slalom, Ramsey turned in a seventh place performance while AJ Glass took 21st and Campbell finished in 28th respectively for the Lions.

Ramsey's individual times earned him third place overall in the combined event and the West Linn boys took fourth place as a team.

The combined girls and boys teams finished in sixth out of 13 qualifying teams and West Linn was the highest placer from the Three Rivers League.