Penn has a ski team and it's pretty good

The Penn ski team doesn't just boast a women's squad that has advanced to the regional championships for three consecutive years and a men's team that barely missed going to nationals only a year ago. The team also counts among its members the No. 1 female skier in the Allegheny Ski Conference, women's captain Georgia Liebman. Yet when most people hear about the Penn club ski racing team, their first reaction is generally something along the lines of, "We have a ski team at Penn?" The low profile of the team is due to several factors -- the lack of a coach to offer guidance, the fact that the team is entirely student-organized, the team's difficulty in getting necessary Student Activities Council funding every year, and the obvious lack of mountains to train on in West Philadelphia. But all these factors have not stopped the team's success. Liebman, who won six of 10 individual events this season, grabbed first-place honors in the league this year. Fellow junior co-captain Andrea Oettinger, a winner of three of the other four races, also secured a spot on the All-Conference team -- as the women's team placed third in the Allegheny's to earn a trip to regionals for the third season in a row. Only two years ago, when both Liebman and Oettinger were freshmen, the women's squad finished second at these same regionals to qualify for Nationals in Lake Tahoe. Joining them on this year's quest for Nationals will be junior Samantha Evian and senior Caroline Simonds. The skiing season involves five race weekends at mountains around Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, starting the first week of the spring semester and finishing around mid-February. The team competes each Saturday in the slalom and each Sunday in the giant slalom against eight other schools, including Penn State, Maryland, Bucknell and Navy. At the end of the season, the top four men's and women's finishers are invited to compete at the regional championships against 12 other area schools -- to be held tomorrow and Sunday at Seven Springs Ski Area, near Pittsburgh, Pa. Of these 16 competitors, the top four schools are then offered the chance to ski for the national title. And this year all of the ski team's members are extremely excited about the women's prospects. "We do have a pretty good chance at regionals," Oettinger said. "We even have a chance at making it to Nationals, but we'll see how it goes." "It has gotten a lot more competitive this year? [but] I think we have the strongest women's team in our conference," said team president, senior Dan Lowen. "[The Empire Conference schools] came in last year and really dominated regionals, and we hope to shake them out this time." As is the case every year, Penn's skiers are expecting tough competition at regionals. Unlike the Quakers' conference, in which most schools only field club teams, some of the colleges represented at Seven Springs -- Boston College, for example -- send varsity-level squads. "Some schools, especially a lot of those in New York, are at a different kind of level because they have the opportunity to train," Oettinger said. "Obviously we can't practice much here in Philadelphia." The men's team finished sixth last year at the regional championships, but unfortunately missed another shot at the regional tournament this season. However, prospects for the future look bright. "We lost five seniors from last year's team," said the men's captain, junior Ben Koodrich. "But our new skiers started to work in well and we were getting stronger by the end of the season. Next year should be a promising year for us." Excitement for the women's prospects this weekend aside, both the men's and women's captains stress the team's need for more members. "We're always looking for more people, for both our competitive A-team and our [less-competitive and more informal] B-team," said Koodrich. "People of all ability levels are welcome to join," said Oettinger.