NCAA: CU pulls away from Utah, wins Western title

The University of Colorado ski team, behind three individual victories  Saturday and five overall this weekend, cruised to the 2008 Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association Championships on Saturday.

BOZEMAN, Mont. — The University of Colorado ski team, behind three individual victories  Saturday and five overall this weekend, cruised to the 2008 Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association Championships on Saturday.
This meet also doubled as the NCAA West Regional/Montana State Invitational, and was held on the same exact courses that will host this year’s NCAA Championships in less than two weeks.
    Colorado won the nine-team meet with 555 points, pulling away from Utah in winning by 28 as the Utes had 527; Denver snared third with 497, with Alaska-Anchorage (458) and New Mexico (445) rounding out the top five.  The Buffs held a 17-point edge over DU at the midway point Friday, with Utah 21 back.
    It was the Buffaloes ninth regional title under head coach Richard Rokos, their first since 2006 on their way to the national title.  Colorado now has 22 RMISA titles, 11 men’s, one women’s and 10 coed.
    In spite of its win, Colorado did not qualify a full team for the NCAA’s. The maximum is 12 per team, three in each discipline (men’s and women’s alpine, men’s and women’s Nordic); CU came up one short on the men’s alpine side. Only Utah from the West qualified a full team, and usually only a couple from the east do so as well; CU won the 2006 NCAA title with 11 skiers, the first and only occasion the national champion did not have a full 12-skier squad. CU and DU qualified 11 this time around.
    “It’s not that threatening not to have a full team, even though they have changed the scoring rules,” Rokos said.  “Slalom is always the great equalizer, so those of us who are short on the alpine side can overcome it with some strategy if the usual number of falls occurs.”  The NCAA used to count a maximum 21 scorers at nationals to equal things out for schools that did not qualify full teams, but the coaches voted during the offseason for all scores to count.  So those schools with 12-skier squads can count 24, with 11-skier teams counting 22.
    “The Nordics are peaking big time and we were fighting a different animal regarding the alpine side, and we didn’t fully meet our goals,” Rokos said.  “But we got two guys in there after having all but one on the bubble.
    “While we didn’t get the results we wanted this weekend, we are heading into the NCAA Championships with a lot of confidence,” DU alpine head coach Andy LeRoy said. “We have several skiers who are capable of winning individual titles, and even without a full team we have a chance to win the team title.”
    Coaches have until late Monday afternoon to identify which skiers they will bring; if a team qualifies more than the maximum three, they have their choice among that pool of athletes.
    In the women’s slalom, CU senior Lucie Zikova won thanks to a dominant second run performance.  She stood in second after the first run, seven-tenths of a second behind New Mexico’s Malin Hemmingsson, but smoked the field the second time down and she won in a two-run time of 1:32.51; Hemmingsson was second in 1:33.32.  It was Zikova’s 14th career win, as she moved into second place by herself on CU’s all-time list. Jenny Lathrop of Denver, winner of Friday’s GS, was third.
    “Lucie could go for it because she had a guaranteed lock on the No. 1 alpine seed, and she’s skiing so well it’s good to have someone like this on your side,” Rokos said.
    In the men’s slalom, Nevada’s Gregory Berger reached the top of the podium for both events here, adding the slalom to his GS title in a 1:46.09 time. Tor Fodnesbergene of New Mexico finished second, followed by Thomas Zumbrunn of Utah.
    In cross-country, Buffs senior Maria Grevsgaard banked another victory, claiming the women’s 15-kilometer classical race, her ninth win this season and 17th overall in her career, as she continues to add to her all-time CU record.  She basically led from wire-to-wire in winning in a 53:42.61 time, as she got the jump on the field on the first lap of the course,  Her initial split was 46 seconds faster than New Mexico’s Polina Ermoshina, who was the eventual runner-up in 54:31.69.
    Grevsgaard held her three-win lead over Zikova, and with only two races remaining this winter, is assured of owning the top spot for the foreseeable future.  However, the pair is tied for the most wins in a single event, as Grevsgaard has 11 classical wins and Zikova the same number in the slalom.        
    CU junior Lenka Palanova finished third for a second straight day, completing the course in 56:27.70, the second of four CU skiers in the top 10 for the second day here.  
    In the men’s 20 km classical, Buffs senior Kit Richmond continued on his recent roll, winning for the third consecutive race in covering the four legs of the course in one hour, three minutes and 24.69 seconds.  In edging Utah’s Snorri Einarsson by 1.8 seconds, Richmond posted his sixth straight top-five finish since illness forced him to miss the classic race in CU’s own invitational. It was also his sixth career win, but just his second triumph in the classic discipline; his other came in the 2006 Western State meet, which was the first career collegiate victory.
    Individually, Colorado claimed the most individual race titles in the west for the third straight winter, with Buffalo skiers winning 17 of the 42 events.  Denver had the next most wins with 11, followed by Utah (8), Nevada (4) and New Mexico (2).
    The 17 wins tied the school mark for the most in a season, joining the 1991, 1998 and 2006 squads; all three went on to win the national championship.  Since the sport went coed in 1983, Colorado has won 204 races, as the Buffaloes topped the 200 plateau with five wins here this weekend.
    The Western skiers will return to Bozeman in less than two weeks and will be joined by their eastern and central region counterparts as the 55th NCAA Championships, which will run from March 5-8.

RMISA Championship/NCAA West Regional Team Scores—1. Colorado 555;  2. Utah 527;  3. Denver 497;  4. Alaska-Anchorage 458;  5. New Mexico 445;  6. Nevada 422;  7. Montana State 368;  8. Western State 199;  9. Whitman 185.

 
Men’s Slalom—1. Gregory Berger, UN, 1:46.09;  2. Tor Fodnesbergene, UNM, 1:46.50;  3. Thomas Zumbrunn, Utah, 1:46.77;  4. Scott Veenis, Utah, 1:46.84;  5. Thomas Schwab, UNM, 1:47.47;  6. Seppi Stiegler, DU, 1:47.58;  7. Egil Ismar, UAA, 1:47.64;  8. Tony Cesolini, CU, 1:47.88;  9. Max Meier-Meitinger, UAA, 1:48.01;  10. Jeff Crompton, UAA, 1:48.18.           

Women's Slalom—1. Lucie Zikova, CU, 1:32.51;  2. Malin Hemmingsson, UNM, 1:33.32;  3. Jenny Lathrop, DU, 1:34.22;  4. Katie Lyons, UN, 1:35.12;  5. Mikaela Grassl, Utah, 1:35.19;  6. Stefanie Klocker, UAA, 1:35.87;  7. Rachel Roosevelt, CU, 1:36.12;  8. Jaana Vaelimaeki, UN, 1:36.14;  9. Allison Empey, UAA, 1:36.62;  10. Molly Ryan, DU, 1:36.95. 

Men’s 20K Classical—1. Kit Richmond, CU, 1:03:24.69;  2. Snorri Ein
arsson, Utah, 1:03:26.49;  3. Jesper Ostensen, CU, 1:04:10.72;  4. Raphael Wunderle, UAA, 1:04:38.70;  5. Haavard Selseng, DU, 1:04.42.36;  6. Mike Hinckley, DU, 1:04:49.77;  7. John Stene, DU, 1:05:36.09;  8. Ben Fick, Utah, 1:05:39.10;    9. Hellebost Tor-Hakon, UNM, 1:06:14.09;  10. Casey Simons, Utah, 1:06:14.09.

Women’s 15K Classical—1. Maria Grevsgaard, CU, 53:42.61;  2. Ermoshina Polina, UNM, 54:31.69;  3. Lenka Palanova, CU, 56:27.70;  4. Annelies Cook, Utah, 56:54.46;  5. Sara Schweiger, Utah, 57:18.64;  6. Antje Maempel, DU, 57:27.96;  7. Karoline Borgnes, CU, 58:02.45;  8. Zoe Roy, Utah, 58:26.51;  9. Jenny Hamilton, CU, 58:48.69;  10. Kaelin Kiesel, MSU, 59:06.72.