RJ Humphreys saved his best skiing for the last races of his high school career.
The 18-year-old Lyndeborough native competed against some of the best skiers in the world last week at his home hill of Sunday River in Maine and fared well, with a handful of top 15 finishes in Super G and alpine combined events. Humphreys’ times in the alpine combined were seconds off U.S. men’s ski team members Bryce Bennett, David Chodunksy and Tim Jitloff, who were competing in Olympic Trials.
“It’s really fun to go out there and ski against these guys and it’s kind of cool, because you look at them as so much bigger and kind of like out of this world,” said Humphreys, who is in his senior year at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine.
Humphreys finished 12th overall in a Super G event, his best result of the week and his best career result in an FIS (International Ski Federation) event. For his age group, U19, Humphreys placed second in the Super G and second in one of the alpine combined races. Humphreys was not part of the Olympic qualifier, but was racing on the same course as the U.S. ski team members.
“To be able to race against them was a good kind of confidence booster — seeing you’re not too far away,” Humphreys said. “So you just have to keep working at it.”
Humphreys has come a long way from his racing days at Crotched Mountain, where he was a charter member of the first race team there at the age of 5. After his freshman year at WLC, Humphreys transferred to Gould Academy to focus more on skiing. Humphreys’ membership on the Gould Academy alpine team has taken him to mountains in Austria and Chile in the last year.
Humphreys is still contemplating his post-graduate plans (he’s been accepted to Plymouth State University and Colby-Sawyer College). Humphreys also talked about staying at Gould Academy for a year to work on his skiing.
“I would really love to try be able to make the U.S. ski team one day, that’s always been one of my goals,” he said.