Norway Ski Team Photo Maria Fornetti of the Norway ski team tackles Pine Mountain Thursday.

IRON MOUNTAIN – The Norway High School co-op boys ski team capped off another strong week of racing, taking second overall at Pine Mountain Thursday afternoon. The performance followed a second-place showing at Houghton’s Mont Ripley Tuesday and was the Knights’ fourth straight second-place finish.

Marquette took top honors Thursday, followed by Norway, Ironwood and Houghton.

The Norway girls, who race in the boys division, saw Gabby Carey place seventh and ninth, Brooke Bittinger in eighth and 10th and Maria Fornetti in 10th and 11th in the double slalom event.

“They skied very well,” coach John Bittinger said. “I think the girls get some funny looks from the other teams skiing in the boys division, but when they ski like they did here, nobody questions it.”

Jake Munn took a sixth for the Knights.

Tuesday’s meet in Houghton was a pair of giant slalom races. Marquette took first, followed by Norway, Ironwood and Houghton.

Munn led all Knight racers placing fourth and fifth. Bittinger finished with two 10th place results, while Gabby Carey took a sixth in one of the competitions and Maria Fornetti earned her top result of the year taking seventh. Rounding out the team results was Peyton Johnson’s pair of 22nd place finishes.

“As well as our results were at Houghton, we still are not a comfortable team on that hill,” Bittinger said. “We had a couple of crashes and some conservative skiing that we need to get though in order to really feel good about our individual results. We can do even better. Overall as a team we are skiing very well right now, especially in our training runs. We now just need to transfer the training speed to the race hill consistently.”

Bittinger is hopeful his squad can carry momentum into Monday’s regional race at Marquette Mountain.

“We have an outside shot at qualifying for states if all five of our racers have their best days at the event,” he said. “That is asking a lot, but we just took second in four straight U.P. events which didn’t seem possible early in the season, so we have to give it our best shot and see what happens.”