Sugar Mountain Adult Race League Holds Final Race and Awards Ceremony Monday Night

The Sugar Mountain Adult Race League (SMARL) held its final race Monday night and the award ceremony was held in the Sugar Mountain lodge afterwards. For 6 Mondays beginning January 8, close to 100 skiers and snowboarders representing 12 teams made their way to Sugar for the 6:30 p.m. race. This is the 13^th year for the SMARL races and many of the skiers and snowboarders have participated every year. Keith Lane of Sugar Mountain Ski Resort Foods provided food and beverage before the award ceremony began. Race sponsor Bill Leonard from Ski Country Sports pointed out that this year the snow conditions have been great for the races, “Except for one night that had a little drizzle, the conditions have been exceptional.” said Leonard. He went on to say, “There’s a lot of people to thank for making our races so successful beginning with Gunther and Kim Jochl for hosting the races at Sugar. And the incredible race crew who gets the course set up every Monday and takes care of timing and scores, and also to the different race teams that sponsored a night of food for all the racers to enjoy after the event.”

Gunther Jochl added, “Everybody has a good time! It’s very popular race series with the team roasters filing up in just a few days in the fall. There’s a lot of camaraderie and the race crew works like crazy every Monday to get the course ready.”

After six weeks of racing and score keeping the first place team for skiing was again Team Sugar who had a total of 118 points. This is the thirteenth year the Team Sugar has been in first place. In second place with 109 points, the Ski Country race team edged out Banner Elk Café this year for the number two spot. Team Banner Elk Café was “number 3” with 101 points relinquishing the number 2 spot that was theirs for most of the thirteen seasons.

For the snowboarders, Skootch Legs was in first place with 77 points followed by Edge of the World with 73 points. And in third place with 62 points was the South Eastern race team.

For the individual results, the accumulated points over the six races had Andrew Jochl in first place for the men’s skiers with a total of 510 points followed by a tie for second place with Erich Schmidinger and Matt Leonard each getting 460 points. And in third place was Austin Oliver with 285 points.

For the women’s skiers, Kim Jochl came in first place with a perfect score of 600 points followed by Caila Hall in second place with 460 points and Elizabeth Beatle in third with 360 points.

In the men’s snowboarding division Erich Schmidinger traded his skis for a snowboard and came in first place 540 points. Austin Burr came in second with 460 points followed by Adam Englert in third with 395 points.

For the women snowboarders, Kristen Gray also had a perfect score of 600 points for first place. Ashley Galleher was second with 450 points and Eve Parsons was third with 330 points.

The evening wrapped up with a round of applause for the winners and another year of exciting competition and beer drinking. A special recognition went to Sean “Stumpy” McKee, Sugar Mountain Race Director for leading the team that made the races possible every Monday night.