Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Jarrett Arguelles may live in Telluride, but last weekend he proved why he calls the slopes of the Steamboat Ski Area home as a representative of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club.

Arguelles, who commutes from Telluride to train with the WSC, won Saturday's junior mogul event and was within reach of taking top honors in Sunday's open event before a fall on his second run hampered him. However, his first run score of 24.16 was enough to earn him second place. Boulder-area skier Kyle Scoby took advantage of the crash to move past Arguelles and capture the win.

"Jarrett was fabulous on junior day and made a pretty good showing in the open as well," coach Erik Skinner said. "We've really worked on getting him to relax in the start gate ... right now he just needs to work on his consistency."

Arguelles' results highlighted what Skinner referred to as a successful weekend for the club.

WSC skier Kyle Ewing was fifth, Bo Randolph was eighth and Charlie Macarthur was tenth in Saturday's event. Bart Robinson came in 11th.

On day two, Steamboat skiers took second with Arguelles, fourth with Scott Vos and fifth with Logan Belz. Bart Robinson was ninth, and Randolph finished 14th.

Alison Levy topped Saturday's junior event and Breckenridge skier Cheryl Pearson topped the field in the open event.

The top local skier was Justine Chellel who took fourth on the first day and fifth on the second.

Other top local finishes Saturday included Jenny Rose Lee in fifth, Caterina Mader in sixth and Patty Hanley in 13th.

On Sunday, Chellel was fifth and Mader came in sixth.

"It was really great to see our J-3 skiers out there and doing really well," Skinner said.

The coach felt that all the skiers in last weekend's events elevated their level of skiing because of the number of U.S. Ski Team members who came out to support the event.

"It was great having those U.S, Ski Team guys forerunning the course for us," Skinner said. "It really pumped everybody up."

Forerunners for the events included Toby Dawson, Mike Friedberg and Luke Westerlund on the men's side.

Travis Mayer was also in town and came out to watch the events.

Former WSC skier Emiko Torito and her U.S. Ski Team teammate Jillian Vogtli acted as forerunners for the women's events.

The moguls wrapped up the first Rocky Mountain Divisional meet of the season. Steamboat will host one more contest at the end of January as well as the Junior Olympic championships in March.

Gmeiner leads Free Riders

Former Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club skier Gina Gmeiner proved she was the queen of the Howelsen Hill halfpipe last Friday by winning a pair of Rocky Mountain Division meets.

Gmeiner now skis for the Steamboat Ski Area's Free Riders team.

Gmeiner scored 69.4 points in the first competition to take the lead. Jenny Haywood of Breckenridge was second and Brittany Biebl came in third.

Steamboat's Jenny Rose Lee was fourth, and Patty Hanley was eighth.

Gmeiner also won the second event of the night with a score of 63.4 points.

Lee moved into second and Haywood was third.

Andrew Duke and Andrew Bennett won the men's events.

Steamboat's Chris Ward was seventh, Tommy Halverson was ninth, Bart Robinson was tenth and Charlie Macarthur was 12th in the first event. Ward was sixth, Halvorson was seventh and Robinson was eighth in the second event.