WILMINGTON, N.Y.—Senior Elliot Perretta (Annecy, France) came in second overall to help the Babson College men's alpine ski team place third in the giant slalom at the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association (USCSA) National Championships at Whiteface Mountain on Wednesday afternoon. 

MacConnell Division rival Clarkson came in first by 1.39 seconds while defending national champions Rocky Mountain was second, just under seven seconds ahead of the Beavers. Castleton gave the MacConnell Division three of the top four teams on the leaderboard and Northern Michigan was nearly eight seconds behind the Spartans in fifth place. 

Perretta recorded a pair of strong runs to cross the finish line with a time of 2:03.47, which was just 0.31 seconds behind first-place Marin Vigneras of UMass. First-year Ben Hostetter (Osterville, Mass.) posted the fastest second-run time among 90 skiers (1:00.28) to place 12th with an overall time of 2:07.05. 

First-year Asher Baron (South Londonderry, Vt.) moved up 10 spots during his second run and finished in 29th position with a time of 2:13.82. Fellow rookie Nico Leunig (Evergreen, Colo.) was the faster skier in the field by nearly a second and a half on his first run but was unable to finish a second trip down the hill in his national championship debut. 

Babson will conclude the USCSA National Championships with the slalom on Friday beginning at 9:15 a.m. 

RACE NOTES
•    Perretta is the second Babson skier to finish second in the giant in as many years after junior Mads Fondevik Syversen (Oslo, Norway) was the runner-up last winter at Mount Bachelor. 
•    Perretta, who now owns four awards over the last two seasons, and Hostetter both garnered All-America honors in the GS.