Pine Mountain Ski Team Photo Megan Bittinger of the Pine Mountain Ski Team captured the overall championship for 14U girls in the USSA Region 2 championships at Brule Mountain.

IRON RIVER — Pine Mountain Ski Team’s Megan Bittinger took the overall championship for the 14U Girls in the USSA Region 2 Championships held at Brule Mountain last weekend.

Over 100 racers competed in this event which consisted of two runs each of slalom and giant slalom plus one run of kombi (a combination of slalom and giant slalom). The times of each race were added together to determine the overall winner.

“Megan skied solid and took a comfortable lead through the first three events,” said PMST Coach John Bittinger, noting two slaloms and kombi runs on Saturday. “She started Sunday morning off with a win in the first GS by a large margin.

“However, on the second run she gave back two seconds of her lead when she slid out of the course a bit and ended with the fifth best time on that run.”

Bittinger’s combined time for the overall award was 217.25 seconds followed by Alexis Hammerstrom of Marquette Mountain Race Team (219.22 seconds) and the third-place finisher was Abby Snook of Cascade Mountain Race Team (219.86 seconds).

“Megan’s win at this race was special since she did not expect these types of results coming into this season,” said coach Bittinger. “She has such a size disadvantage versus the others she is competing against that she needs to be technically strong at all times in order to compete. She has developed an ability to use her body angles to help create the needed power to ski fast.”

Bittinger and the coaching staff see a “high level of competition” on the PMST.

“We have a group of very skilled racers that push each other at practice and we see huge improvements in ability of all our racers as a result,” Bittinger said. “I believe a part of Megan’s success this weekend was the help from her teammates even though they were not in this race.

Bittinger’s win in the USSA event earned the Pine Mountain Ski Team a “three-peat.” Megan’s sister, Brooke, won this event in 2017 and Gabby Carey took the top spot in 2018.

Pine Mountain Ski Team has concluded its season and will start up again next December.