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Preps open season at Skierdome Classic

Todd Hartley

It all begins tonight – high school basketball, that is.

And if you’re a hoops junkie, Aspen High School is the place to be for the next two days.

After just three weeks of practices, often two per day, and a handful of scrimmages, the Aspen High School boys and girls basketball teams will officially open the 1999-2000 season with the annual Aspen High School Skierdome Classic.



Teams will be on hand from Middle Park High School, Soroco High School, Colorado Springs Christian High School and Glenwood Springs High School for the round-robin event that will see each team playing two games today and Saturday.

Action will begin at 4 this afternoon at AHS when Soroco’s girls take on Colorado Springs Christian. That game will be followed at 5:30 p.m. when Soroco’s boys square off against Glenwood Springs.




Aspen’s girls will enter the fray at 7 p.m. with a game against Middle Park, and then the Aspen boys will wrap up the first day of the tournament with an 8:30 contest, also versus Middle Park.

Saturday’s first game will pit Middle Park’s girls against C.S. Christian in a 9 a.m. matchup. After a brief respite, the Middle Park girls team will take the court at 1 p.m. for a matchup with Soroco, and then Middle Park and Soroco will butt heads again for a boys game at 2:30 p.m.

The Aspen girls team will take on C.S. Christian at 4 p.m. Saturday, followed by the finale of the Skierdome Classic, a 5:30 p.m. game between the Aspen boys team and their rivals from the other end of the valley, the Glenwood Springs Demons.

If history gives any indication, both the AHS girls and boys should be able to open the tournament in style on Friday evening. At last year’s Skierdome Classic, both teams rolled to big wins over the visitors from Middle Park.

The boys team took down the Panthers by a score of 70-52, and the girls cruised to a 67-46 victory behind 27 points from Jill Evans.

Evans, now a senior, led the Aspen girls in scoring last season and is a key member of a team that sports four girls with starting experience from last year’s squad. In addition to Evans, the Aspen roster includes seniors Jennifer Snook, Kelli Dangler, Rebecca Anderson and Marta Losonczy, juniors Cory Reno and Ellen Falender and sophomores Muriel Hale, Zara Podolak, Lacee Patterson, Kelly Waldron and Hailee Walker.

The Skiers will be coached this year by first-year head man Lance Finkbeiner. Hillary Trish, Terri Dangler and Virginia Ammons are the assistant coaches.

On the boys’ side, senior guard Cory Robinson is one of the few remaining players from the Aspen team that won last year’s Skierdome Classic. The Skiers also beat Soroco 75-39 to lay claim to the title for coach Steve Ketchum.

Ketchum is back for his second year as Aspen’s coach, but if he hopes to repeat last year’s success, he’ll have to do it with a cast of new faces. Besides Robinson, the seniors on Aspen’s roster are Jared Gibson, Kyle Taylor, Talbott Walker and Robert Tomaczek. They will be joined by juniors Duncan Delano and Blake Beyea, sophomore Jeff Brence and freshman Nick Farrell.

Jared Kidd, another junior, is also expected to log some time on the varsity roster this season. Scott Dorais will be manning the helm for the Skiers’ JV team this winter.

In other area basketball action, the Basalt Longhorns boys and girls teams will play host to state powerhouse Buena Vista to open the season. The Buena Vista boys team is the defending state 3A champion.

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