The HBS 2001 Ski Team won its 5th MBA Ski Championship title at the Tuck Winter Carnival in Hanover, NH. The competition brought together MBAs from 16 Schools: Carlson, Chicago, Columbia, Darden, Fletcher, Fuqua, HBS, Johnson, Kellogg, LBS, Michigan, Sloan, Stern, Tuck, Wharton, and Yale. In the past 14 years, HBS has won the Cup in 1988, 1997, 1999 and 2000, while Tuck has won every other race.
After last year’s win established HBS as the team to beat this year’s team has ensured that HBS will remain a dominant force in the future. Tuckies, who according to Jeff Kirwood view the trophy as the equivalent of Stanley Cup, fervently insisted on bringing it back to Hanover but feel short for the third year leaving as the HBS squad has won four out of the last five years.
The following is a summary of how the victorious weekend progressed…
Friday
Due to some unforeseen travel delays the HBS squad had to rally late for a dinner in Hanover. However, after gathering at a local pub they knew they had to ski well when Tuck first-year, and friend of many HBS students, Gretchen Moore lead a series of cheers against them before the race even began.
Furthermore, when Captain Narcisa Sehovic entered the registration there was a noticeable sigh from all the other teams assembled. It became obvious that HBS was there with their normal compliment of excellent skiers and the other teams would be left to fight for second place.
After dinner, at the first official event of the 2000 Tuck Winter Carnival, a Welcome Reception and party at the Collis Student Center, various members of the team practiced the art of networking catching up with acquaintances of old teams and trying to make new friends. Main stars of the night were London Business School band and Tuck band, which both threw a fantastic musical performance with a wide repertoire of songs. Afterwards, selected members of the team hit local parties in the nearby fraternity houses to continue networking.
Saturday
In the morning, 252 B-School ski racers gathered at the new Dartmouth Skiway lodge to test their ski abilities. The snow and the Grand Slalom course looked great, promising a fun day on the slope although some might complain the conditions were a bit icy. In total there were greater than 20 teams ready to tackle the ski course, each team consisting of 4 men and 2 women. At the start you could see the excitement as Narcisa lead of the HBS Team in defense of the Cup. Although Naked Nate was not available to race this year Wonder Woman did show up but even she was not able to help Tuck displace the HBS Team.
Team and Individual Results
The team score was obtained by summing the four best individual race results in a team, one of which had to be that of a female racer. Individual results were obtained by combining each skier’s time from both a morning and an afternoon race.
After the HBS Team had completed their first run you could feel their excitement. All the racers had given strong performances and they had almost a 2 second lead over the Tuck Squad. Even though they would have to switch courses for the second head to head race it was going to be tough for anyone to overcome that much of a deficit.
Among men’s individual race results, Greg Tobias and Erich Horsley took 1st and 2nd place respectively and Narcisa placed 1st among the women.
Apres ski
The first post-race event was the Apres Ski party at the Dowd’s Country Inn in Lyme, NH, sponsored by Accenture. Although no one was sure of the final results you could sense that HBS had defended the Cup again and Tuck would have to wait another year. Later in the evening, after a “power” nap, everybody reconvened for the Awards Ceremony Banquet and party at the notorious Coolidge Hotel in White River Junction, VT. At this point the other teams decided to extract revenge for the HBS dominance and test out the teams chugging skills.
After receiving their individual awards and a team Chug of the Championship Cup it was on to a night of dancing and partying. The first event was the annual Knissel Cup given to the fastest Chugging team. Unfortunately chugging skills at HBS are not as good as our skiing skills but everyone survived. HBS was eliminated in the first round to a crowd favorite Stern, basically anyone going against us was the crowd favorite. Although some members of the team were sad to miss the Pracilla Ball, overall there was some dancing and behind closed doors we never know who was wearing what.
HBS should be in good position to claim the title again next year, as three members of the team are returning and HBA Admissions has officially started recruiting to fill these valuable spots so next year they can take home both trophies, officially.
If you are interested in joining the 2001 team, please contact Kendra Kretz kkretz@mba2002.hbs.edu, Greg Tobias gtobias@mba2002.hbs.edu or Erich Horsley ehorsley@mba2002.hbs.edu.
