WATERVILLE — This is where the snow is.

It’s tough to find spots for Nordic skiing across the state right now, especially after a recent thaw and a lack of snow that’s followed. One place that hasn’t had that issue? Waterville’s Quarry Road Trails, which are still packed with the white stuff.

“It’s really nice to get up here and get on the snow,” said Portland High’s Henry Morrison, a competitor in Saturday’s Waterville High School Sprint Festival. “You look at other places around the state, and they don’t have anything, but there’s some really good snow here.”

It’s been decades since a Maine Principals’ Association meet has been held in Waterville, but on this day, the Quarry Road Trails made for an exciting day of racing in the Elm City. Teams from around the state came to participate in an event that included a team competition, individual sprints and a relay.

One of the first big Nordic ski events on the MPA calendar every season is the Bethel Relays, usually contested around this time each year at Telstar High School. Yet with insufficient snow in that area of the state, the event was canceled earlier in the week.

Skiers and coaches still wanted to race, however, and the Quarry Road Trails provided an appealing option to do so. Powered by the potent Harold Alfond Snowmaking Center, the venue took on the event at the last minute and was able to provide a suitable setting for a day of racing that others could not.

“We wanted to make racing happen, so we worked it out as a backup plan just in case,” said Waterville coach Jeff Tucker. “For a lot of teams, especially the southern (Maine) schools, this might be their first race or maybe their first time on snow, so it was great that we could make it work.”

An added bonus for Tucker’s team was that the event served as a home meet. The Purple Panthers are sponsoring a Nordic ski team for the first team this winter, hosting skiers from nearby Messalonskee as well as Mount View and Belfast.

“We have a small team — we’re less than 10 skiers this year — but it’s a really good core group of kids of different experience levels,” Tucker said. “We’re fortunate that this is our home venue and that we’ve been able to ski a lot, and hopefully, that will give us a leg up in fitness later in the season.”

Mt. Blue swept boys and girls team titles, and the Cougars’ Nora McCourt and Messalonskee’s Beckett Cote claimed individual wins. Freeport’s Owen Dawson and Orono’s Clara White earned individual sprint victories.

The final events were sprint relays. Mt. Blue swept both, with Elias Bartlett and Henri McCourt claiming a win for the boys, and Maya Kellett and Nora McCourt placing first for the girls.

“We wanted to honor the Bethel Relays and still have the big event of the day be a two-person sprint relay,” said Pat Cote, the race director as well as a volunteer assistant coach of Quarry Road Ski Club. “It’s good to be able to give it a bit of the same feel, even if these racers couldn’t be up there today.”

The challenging nature of the championship-level course was apparent early, as powdery snow made it tough for racers to get uphill. It was also clear in later races, as powder and a patch of ice at the corner of a small hill produced a number of falls throughout the afternoon.

Competitors, though, seemed to embrace the challenge. Racers began to learn the ins and outs of the course, and they weren’t about to complain about any opportunity to compete, with Mother Nature providing little to no options to do so elsewhere.

“It’s a really tough course — you can’t get too excited and go too hard on the hills — but it was a good race,” said Portland’s Alex Price, who teamed up with Morrison in the relay. “We’ve only had one day of snow in Portland, so it was great to be here.”