The Marquette Senior High School Nordic Boys and Girls Team skied to the Michigan State Combined Title at the State Championships in Houghton on February 18 with a team score of 389 points. The Copper Country Ski Tigers came in 2nd with their Combined team total of 372 followed by Traverse City Central with 195 points. The MSHS Boys easily won the Boys Division picking up 232 points followed by the Copper Country Boys with 159 points and Traverse City Central with 100. The MSHS Girls took 2nd overall with a team total of 157. The Copper Country Girls placed first scoring 213 points while Traverse City Central took 3rd with 95 points.
Pacing the MSHS Girls was Ellen Wiitala of Marquette who won the 1K Classic Sprints and the 5K Pursuit—a 5K Freestyle race followed by a 5K Classic race. Her combined time for the Pursuit was 32:15 handily defeating Evelyn Delong of the Copper Country team whose combined time was 33:42. Britta Schroeter from the Gogebic Ski Team placed 3rd place with a time of 34:07. Wiitala, a senior, has won the title four years in a row.
Blake Murray of the MSHS Boys Team took the top spot with his combined 5K Pursuit time of 28:24. Murray, a junior took his first Pursuit win at States. Eric Wagner also of MSHS skied to 2nd place in the pursuit following with a combined time of 28:56. Third place finisher was Andrew Bruning of Traverse City Central with a time of 29:06. MSHS placed four more skiers in the top 10 including 6th place finisher Ben Wright with a time of 30:12, Marty Gray in 7th skiing in 30:17, Andrew Twohey in 9th with his time of 30:32, followed by Mike Wiitala in 10th skiing the pursuit in 31:20