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Show 'Mean' moguls don't intimidate Park City youngsters v, Nris W Eric Long, an eighth grader at Treasure Mountain Middle School, who slammed his way through the moguls with a staccato style that astonished many of the spectators. "Eric Long is reminiscent of Dean 'the Machine' Murphy (a well-known professional mogul skier)," Stiles said. "It's a pleasure to watch him ski." Darren Bean was recuperating from a sprained ankle but still managed to finish second behind Long in the JII class. Rating each skier's performance per-formance was a battery of five judges. Points were awarded for turns and line (6 pts max. ), air (2 pts max.) and speed (2 pts max.). Each skier was allowed two runs, with the best of the two used for the results. Although freestyle skiing has three components aerials, ballet, bal-let, and moguls the energies of most young Park City competitors have been focused on only one. "The Park City kids are all specialists in the moguls because they have no means to train for aerials and they have just started ballet," Stiles said. The inexperience of the Park City skiers in ballet showed Sunday when the freestyle competition shifted to Solitude. The results from Solitude saw only one Park City skier, Jon O'Brien, in the top three finishers of any class. Any class, that is, except the Junior HI boys. At that level, in spite of their lack of training, the Park City freestylers cleaned up as they had at ParkWest. Darin Oar took first, Beau Brinkerhoff by David Hampshire If you want to see how the aerials are done, watch the kids from Bogus Basin, Idaho. If you want to watch ballet, check out Jan Bucher's students from Salt Lake City. But if it's bump skiers you're after, you need look no further than Park City. Young bump skiers from the Park City area were the ones to watch Saturday as they dominated dom-inated the Junior II (ages 14-15) and Junior m (12-13) classes at the Intermountain Division mogul competition at ParkWest Ski Area. Park City skiers swept the top three places in the JII class and the top nine (that's right, nine) in the JIII class as the Intermountain Division freestyle circuit made a stop in their own back yard. Leading the parade to the winner's platform were Eric Long, Darren Bean and Dan Mahoney (all in the JII class), and Craig Rodman, Sean Smith and Kevin Holliday (in the jm class). Rodman's score, incidentally, would have been good enough to win the JII class and would have placed him fourth amoung the seniors. Local skiers also scored well in the women's division, as Jessie Whitesides and Denyce Stiles finished second and third behind Marjorie Koesnel of Salt Lake City. Only in the two older men's divisions did Park City skiers finish out of the money. Among the senior men, Chris Jensen and Tim Morris, both of Salt Lake City, finished first and second while third place went to Mike Seaman of Kalispell, Montana. And in the Junior I (ages 16-18) class, three Salt Lake City skiers, Rodney Larsen, Chad Nelson and Robert Boone, carried the top three places. , i One of . Park City's brightest hopes in the JI class, Craig Griffin, a senior at Park City High School, lost out when a binding released prematurely. Shawn Stiles, who serves as an advisor for the older (JI and JO) boys, said a layer of new snow which fell overnight was quickly carved up by the first skiers through the course on ParkWest's Massacre run. That made things difficult for the later (usually younger) competitors. "All of the soft stuff got pushed into little mounds," Stiles said. "Some of the kids were disappearing dis-appearing behind the bumps-big, bumps-big, mean, nasty ones, the kind that chew you up but don't spit you out. "The deeper the troughs, the more difficult it is because you're forced to ski where you don't want to." But that didn't seem to bother Photos by Jeff Jensen Eric Long of Park City displays the form which won him first place in the Junior II (ages 14 and !") class. 'I i'sm!;Msmm?!i:?ry ;: 4t !, , . - , f ' f Although inverted aerials are prohibited by the United States Ski Association, this lone ski decided to try one anyway. second and Sean Smith third. Other Park City skiers finished fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and 10th. When Sean Smith's results in ballet from Solitude were combined com-bined with his results in aerials and moguls from the Jackson Hole meet in January, he was named the best overall freestyle skier in the Junior III ranks. O'Brien's second-place finish in ballet in the senior men's division came on the heels of an 8th place in moguls at ParkWest. O'Brien, who works part-time as a ski instructor at Park City, also acts as an advisor to the Jin group. The next stop for the freestyle competitors is Powder Mountain where mogul and ballet events will be held Feb. 9-10. Louis Izatt, 19, of Salt Lake City ties to impress the judges with this aerial maneuver. |