Sunlight J5 skiers excel on home hill

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Sunlight Mountain Resort hosted the J5 Festival for the third year in a row Jan. 28-29.
There were two demanding slalom races on Saturday, Jan. 28, and the young Sunlight Winter Sports Club racers displayed confidence on their home hill with some solid results.
The Sunlight Winter Sports Club placed three girls in the top 14 among a field of 75 athletes in Saturday’s first race.
Allison Cornelius, 9, led the way with a 10th-place finish. Close behind were Skylar Adelman, 10, with her best slalom result ever in 13th and Summer McSwain, who finished 0.13 seconds behind in 14th.
The SWSC boys continued to prove that they are a force to be reckoned with in the first race.
Jonathan Simpson, who has shown drastic improvement over the past three weeks, opened with a fifth-place showing. Close behind Simpson was 8-year-old Garrett Dollahan, whose seventh-place finish was his best so far this season.
Dollahan, who is officially a J6 (7- to 8-year-olds) was the fastest in that age category. He has shown much in the way of consistency this season, and had another seventh-place finish in Saturday’s afternoon race.
In a talented field of 57 boys, Sunlight’s Ethan de Moraes, 10, and Tucker Sheldrake, 9, gave respectable efforts, with 24th- and 25th-place finishes.
On Saturday afternoon, the slalom courses were quite challenging. The majority of the Sunlight skiers fell. Adelman and Dollahan were the only survivors. Adelman finished in 17th and Dollahan in seventh.
The following day, the J5 Festival ran a head-to-head, dual-style slalom race.
“This format brought out the best skiing from the entire field,” Sunlight head coach John Bresnitz said. “It was a fun, sunny way to end the weekend of competition. The Sunlight Resort was outstanding in its efforts to pull off another very successful festival.”

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