The Harvard ski team captured second place overall in the Franklin Pierce Invitational on Friday at Mt. Watatic in Ashby, while Radcliffe downhillers finished in the middle of the pack in their meet this weekend.

Alan Hale paced the Crimson in both the slalom and giant slalom, finishing second and third.

Bruce Ballentine came in sixth and Eric Jewett, eighth, in the giant slalom.

Poor Slope Condition

By the time the slalom was run in the afternoon, the course was in poor shape. "The slalom was run on bumpy terrain" that was "not ideal by any means," Coach David Hubbard said yesterday.

Yet the Crimson performed considerably better in this event as both Hale and Ballentine moved up a place to second and fifth.

Flew Off Course

Gordon Adler and Bob Kelly pushed into the top ten by finishing seventh and tenth respectively.

Hubbard said Jewett did not finish because he got going too fast and "flew off the course."

The meet had been scheduled for two successive days, but Saturday's jumping and cross country portion had to be cancelled because of poor conditions.

Hubbard said he was pleased with this, week's finish, because he had left behind two of his top skiers, Peter Anton and Captain Richard Raines. He said he wanted more of the team to compete so that he could fill in the fifth spot on the alpine squad for the ECAD Division II championships at Gunstock, New Hampshire, this weekend.

If the Crimson skiers take first place at the championships, they will move up into Division I and compete in these championships on Febuary 27 and 28 at Middlebury. Last year, Norwich unseated Harvard for the tenth and final place in the top division.

A Molehill

The Radcliffe ski team took third in the slalom and fourth in the giant slalom in a WISC (Women's Intercollegiate Ski Conference) meet on Saturday and Sunday at Mt. Southington in Connecticut.

Coach Peter Tolnai said after the match that Mt. Southington, located midway between New Haven and Hartford, is "the smallest hill and patch of snow I've seen."

In Saturday's slalom, Radcliffe finished in back of UMass and Boston University. Lenny Wilson placed seventh, 4.6 seconds behind the winner. Carlyle Singer took ninth and Jane Mather finished 14th.

Wilson also paced Radcliffe in the giant slalom, with a seventh. Singer gave two "great runs," Tolnai said, but her goggles destroyed her vision in the third run and she did not place.