SAS storming through competitions to bring home medals
University of St Andrews Snowsports has had lots of success last weekend up in the Cairngorms mountains, at the Scottish Alpine Student Championship (SASC), placing third overall. They also went onto win medals in the Granite City freestyle in Aberdeen!
We had two top ten finishes in the men’s race with Matthew Goodman getting 6th place and Ralston Smith finishing 7th. In the women’s, Lauren Rae placed 10th and Anastasia Ougrin 11th. In the freestyle, Danica Griffiths won best female kicker trick!
The Scottish Alpine Student Championship (SASC) has been running for three years now and it is the only Snowsports competition in the UK on real snow! The competition was partially set up by last year’s Saints Snowsports President, Jemma Clarke who still sits on the committee of the competition. SASC takes place over the course of one full day which includes two slalom runs for the racing girls and boys (with the course reset in between), and a mini park for the freestylers which they can go through as many times as they wish, and they are holistically marked on performance.
This year, Saints Snowsports took 6 racers (3 boys, 3 girls) and 4 freestylers (2 boys, 2 girls), and some of their recreational team to spectate and have a ski around the Cairngorms resort.
The Race team included Roli Smith, Freddie Horn, Matthew Goodman, Anastasia Ougrin, Lauren Rae and Megan Lam. The Freestyle team consisted of Cole Chappell, David Thomas, Danica Griffiths and Alice Heaton.
Two of the recreational team members also foreran the race, which means to check the course before the competitors go down. This gives them some racing experience and encouragement to sign up to race next year.
Roli and Matthew both finished within the top ten boys (out of 38 male racers) and Lauren finished 10th out of 32 girls! These times are worked out by adding the time of the first run and second run; participants must finish both to qualify. 
As SASC is the only competition on snow in the UK, it attracts many of the best racers across the UK, many of whom have competed in the Europa cup and represented Great Britain in other competitions, so to finish in the top ten among such a high calibre of athlete is outstanding!
As freestyle is a more relaxed competition, there are no numbers on total participants, but Danica received best female freestyle kicker trick winning her a medal and a fleece!
St Andrews also finished third overall as a team (essentially the third best participating University), which is decided by all the combined results. Being 3rd out of the 12 universities that competed is an amazing result for a relatively small university and team, beating the likes of Glasgow and Edinburgh!
Additionally, Saints Snowsports freestyle team travelled up to Aberdeen to compete in the annual Granite City freestyle competition on 14th March and had the most outstanding results they have ever received. Danica Griffiths and Mia Fish placed second and third respectively in women’s freestyle, and David Thomas finishing second in men’s freestyle!
Congratulations to the participants and Saints Snowsports Club for such an amazing feat!