Pioneers, Buffs Tied For Lead, Utah Surging At Own Invitational

Sunday, January 10, 2016 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

MIDWAY, Utah—While Denver and Colorado battled it out in the closest of meets, Utah took the day and despite being in third place may have proved themselves the favorite in their own meet, winning both freestyle races here Sunday at Soldier Hollow.

Utah won the men’s freestyle race with 92 points, nine ahead of Colorado’s 83. The CU women struggled with just 53 points in the women’s freestyle race while Utah continued to throw the hammer down, scoring 88 points. DU, meanwhile, scored a consistent 67 points in both races. When it all settled, the Buffs and Pioneers are tied with 454 points, but the Utes may be in the best position to win, just six points back with 448 points.

Behind those three teams, Montana State is fourth with 355 points, New Mexico fifth with 351 points while Alaska Anchorage rounds out the NCAA teams in sixth with 281 points and associate members Westminster (258) and Colorado Mountain (73) do not field Nordic teams.

Utah’s Nick Hendrickson won the men’s race, a 10K interval start freestyle race, in a time of 23:27.0. He beat out Colorado’s Mads Stroem (23:34.8) by just 7.8 seconds while DU’s Moritz Madlener rounded out the podium in a time of 23:41.9, another 7.1 seconds behind Stroem. Montana State’s Sawyer Kesselheim was fourth in 23:47.9 and Utah’s Niklas Persson (23:51.0) rounded out the top five.

Utah and Colorado both had three men in the top 10 while Montana State had two, both in the top 6, as the Bobcats finished third in the team standings in the race with 73 points.

On the women’s side, New Mexico’s Emilie Cedervarn won the race, edging out Denver newcomer Linn Eriksen by just 4.6 seconds while Utah’s Veronika Mayerhofer was third just 5.7 seconds behind Eriksen. Cedervarn and Mayerhofer were two of the three dominant skiers last year.

The Bobcats were again impressive with three in the top 9, matched only by the Utes three in the top seven. MSU’s Cambria McDermott was fourth and the Utes’ Sloan Storey rounded out the top 5. An early indication of a potentially great year on the women’s Nordic side, the top 11 were separated by just 33.1 seconds and the difference between the eight skiers that finished between fourth and 11th was less than 20 seconds.

The Utah meet concludes Monday with the classical races back at Soldier Hollow. Meanwhile up north at Big Sky, the Montana State Invitational got underway Sunday, as well, with giant slalom races. The alpine portion of that meet concludes Monday with slalom races.