Although none of Harvard's alpine skiers qualified for the nationals, coach Morse said he was optimistic about the men's and women's alpine teams.

"The other team coaches would tell me that they noticed that Harvard skiers got better from race to race," said Morse, who is in his first year as Harvard's alpine coach.

"Our women's team was apparently not strong at all last year," Morse said. "Now we have several freshmen with high school race experience and our women's team has really shown great improvement."

"It's hard to quantify the improvement in our men's team," he said. "The two captains, Eric O'Brien and Eric Horsley, skied with the team last year but we got some good freshman talent."

"Dan Williams is our best young talent, and freshman Matt Ware has worked hard and shown great improvement," Morse said.

The nordic team fielded a squad of five men and four women in the competition and came away with a couple of outstanding individual performances.

Junior captain Molly Ware finished 12th in the nordic classical and 20th in freestyle while sophomore Matt Bellizzi finished 25th in the classical event and 12th in the freestyle.

Ware's and Bellizzi's ranking for the season left them on the bubble for qualifying for nationals. Both have been designated first alternates.

"Molly's and Matt's performances were our biggest successes in the carnival," student-coach Chris Leggett said of his teammates. "It's really tough for skiers from Boston to do well when all the other schools have easy access to mountains and trails."

Vermont skiers Trond Nystad, Aki Partanen and Camut Nystad (Twin brother of Trond) finished one, two, three in the men's classical.

Trond Nystad also took first in the freestyle race and Partanen took second again. Zach Caldwell of Middlebury finished third.

"Vermont recruits a lot of skiers from Scandanavia--from Norway and Finland," Leggett said. "There's a little bit of resentment because of that, but it does elevate the level of competition."

Middlebury performed very well in the women's nordic event as six skiers qualified for nationals. Because of national tournament rules, however, only four will be allowed to represent the school.

Leggett, a senior who coached his high school ski team last year during a year off from Harvard, was pleased with his team's performance over the season.

"We had a great season," Leggett said. "It was by far the best in 10 years or so."

In combined alpine and nordic scoring Vermont earned 1,199 points, Middlebury, with its home-snow advantage, took second at 1,164.5 points and Dartmouth finished third with 1,067 points.

The Crimson's 10 place total of 499 put them in the middle of the pack at the Carnival.