BRATTLEBORO-Upon the advent of the airplane at the turn of the 20th century, locals with an eye on the sky didn't need a 1919 front-page headline to see that Evelyn Harris was the "First Woman to Fly Over Brattleboro."
But unbeknownst to many, the late pioneer also made history by repeating the feat on skis.
Harris had just turned 25 in the winter of 1922 when her brother, Fred, turned a hometown hill into what's now the sole Olympic-size ski jump in New England and just one of six of its stature in the nation.
Fred was the first to test it. His sister, records show, was the second.
But while Fred went on to annually present a Winged Ski Trophy to fellow man after man, the occasional female jumper was left to leap without equal reward.
Until now. A century after its start, Harris Hill introduced a new women's trophy over the weekend - only to see Mother Nature crash the annual two-day event and condense it into a dizzying four-hour flurry of competition.
"It turned out fine," said 22-year-old Slovenian Nejka Zupančič, who won the first annual award ahead of fellow Slovenian Lara Logar in second and Norwegian Nora Midtsundstad in third. "The hill is awesome, and the crowd is amazing."
Organizers who've struggled with freak thaws since the Covid-19 pandemic found themselves at Saturday's start with a storm forecast for that evening through Sunday. And so they decided to run all the scheduled weekend rounds back-to-back, with the first at noon and the fourth and final as the sun and snow began to descend.
"The overall safety of the event and its athletes is paramount," Todd Einig, director of competition, told the press.
"Based on what's predicted," added organizing committee leader Kate McGinn, "we didn't think we could keep up with the weather."
Although Harris Hill has canceled Sunday jumping in the past for lack of snow, no one could recall ever doing so because of too much of it, said the venue's historian, Dana Sprague, who has attended the event since 1966.
As a result, 38 athletes from seven states and three European countries sped off the 30-story-high launch at a rapid-fire pace as an estimated 4,000 spectators reacted with cheers, mitten-muffled clapping, and clanging cowbells.
"It's a little bit tough on the legs, but we'll get some rest and it will be OK," said 21-year-old Slovenian Urh Rošar, who won the men's trophy ahead of Norwegians Ole Gravermoen in second and Sander Bakken in third.
'It's nice to feel equality'
Although Evelyn Harris was the first woman to jump at the hill, she never was an official competitor. Female flyers at the time were considered more of a novelty than the norm.
Massachusetts sisters Dorothy and Maxine Graves, for example, jumped in Brattleboro in 1938, only to be disqualified after judges learned they weren't registered with the U.S. Eastern Amateur Ski Association, newspapers would report. Undeterred, Dorothy competed again after the event's World War II hiatus.
"The crowd's favorite," the Brattleboro Reformer declared in 1946 when she finished fifth in a field of 22.
Harris Hill has hosted many women in subsequent decades, even as the Winter Olympics prohibited them from taking to the air until 2014. But during that time, the local venue never offered them an award like the men.
"Women's ski jumping has faced inequality and discrimination for its entire existence," said 32-year-old hill veteran Spencer Knickerbocker, one of two area competitors alongside Spencer Jones, the 14-year-old Putney great-grandson of the late U.S. Sen. George Aiken. "It's our responsibility to help."
Knickerbocker joined with Fred Harris's daughter, Sandy, to lobby for the women's trophy.
"It's time," Sandy Harris said. "It's past time."
The Presidents Day weekend event featured 200 volunteers who did everything from clearing the 90-meter slope with leaf blowers to carting out a winner's pedestal that the three top female finishers chose to stand on together.
Said Slovenian Lara Logar, who traveled 4,000 miles for the tournament: "It's nice to feel equality."
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.