Steamboat Pilot & Today

The members of the Steamboat Springs freestyle team headed to Winter Park last week with high hopes and returned home with a lot of top finishes.

Leading the way on the opening day was aerialist Kyle Ewing, who chalked up two second-place finishes.

In the first event, Ewing scored 112.16 points on a quadruple twister and a triple twister spread. He was the top J-2 in the event.

Guy Nickerson, a senior, won the event with 13.36 points by performing a helicopter and a helicopter spread move.

Other top Steamboat finishers in the first dual event included Colin Shinabarker in fourth, Luke Belz in fifth and Jarrett Arguelles in fifth. Paul Khuri was eighth and Nick Bucci came in 10th.

The order of finish was pretty much the same in the second event, which was limited to just one jump.

Nickerson won with a helicopter spread that accounted for 60.43 points.

Ewing answered with a triple twister spread for 58.96 points. Belz finished in third with 57.87 points. Arguelles was fifth.

The local women were led by Mary Ann Skraba in third place and Erica Damon in seventh. The first event was won by Jill Norman of Winter Park. Skraba was fifth in the second event and Damon cam in sixth.

On Saturday, the competition moved to the mogul course, where more than 100 competitors battled for the top spot. When it was over, Steamboat's Lauren Crawford earned the girls top spot with a 24.10 run, and Travis Mayer won the men's with a score of 27.15.

Other top girls were Carly Gmeiner in sixth with 21.53 points and sister Gina Gmeiner in ninth with 20.54. Damon was 11th, Skraba came in 16th and Jess Vincent was 17th.

Logan Belz placed fifth in the boys event with teammates Ewing taking 13th, Kyle Scoby placing 14th and Brian Klem finishing 16th.

Other Steamboat skiers included Mike Mead (20th), Tommy Halverson (28th), T. Shinabarker (29th), Ryan Seher (30th), Khuri (31st), Luke Vincent (35th) and Adam Krause (36th).

On Sunday, the freestyle event came to a close with a dual mogul event.

Gina Gmeiner settled for second place after falling to Norman in the girls finals. Crawford brought home third, Carly Gmeiner and Damon both finished fifth and Skraba and Jess Vincent locked up ninth-place finishes.

In the boys final, Logan Belz lost a tough dual with Summit County skier David Babic to earn second place. Scoby finished in the fifth-place slot. The team will have a short break before heading to Monarch Jan. 20 through 21 for a open mogul.