Denver Claims 23rd National Championship

Saturday, March 12, 2016 • by Laura Mishkind, RMISA

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.—After four days of races, the University of Denver Pioneers were named the 2016 NCAA Skiing National Champions. Both the men and women’s teams finished with two skiers in the top 10 after the classical races, and Linn Eriksen earned her first individual national championship title.

“It’s been way better than expected. I’m really, really proud,” Eriksen said. “We have such a young team, especially on the women’s side and they have impressed me so much, and the boys too. It’s been super fun. I think everyone has succeeded and maybe everyone has skied their best races this weekend, which is impressive.”

Freshman Eriksen took eighth in the women’s 5K freestyle earlier in the week, but she said she came into her final race feeling confident, especially because of the lead Denver already held.

“Today Linn Eriksen to win, that was really incredible,” Denver’s Nordic coach Dave Stewart said. “She actually fell quite hard in our regional championships and injured her rib and was not able to ski for the previous two weeks. She became 100 percent right before theses races and went into them without any training on snow for the last two weeks. She came out and had a pretty good race in the skate race, and today she was just in her element out there in these difficult conditions in classic and was just able to do her thing. She’s an amazing skier and I’m very proud of her.”

This was Eriksen’s first time competing in the NCAA championships and she walked away with an individual title.

“I just skied for myself and for the whole team,” she said. “It was incredible.”

Denver’s overall team is very young, but they did not let their age or experience level stand in the way of having strong performances. Moritz Madlener (49:43.6) finished the men’s 20K classical right behind Mads Stroem (49:41.9) from the University of Colorado Boulder. His teammate Dag Frode Trolleboe took the tenth spot with a time of 51:24.2. In addition to Eriksen’s wining time of 54:37.6, Aja Starkey (55:20.5) was in sixth for the Denver women.

“When we won in 2014 we had a very veteran group,” Stewart said. “To have a couple freshmen from Colorado here, skiing in their first NCAA Championships and go out and be all American, and just have their best races of the year at the championship under this pressure is just unbelievable.”

Denver wrapped up the competition with 567.5 points. Colorado took second place with 491.5, just beating out third place Utah who had 485 points. Montana State University finished in fourth with 406 points after leading for the first two days in Steamboat Springs.

This is Denver’s second national championship in the last three years, but they are already looking towards next year.

“We’ll try to keep it rolling. Obviously at Denver we focus on winning national championships,” Stewart said. “We emphasize development throughout the year for our athletes and try to become faster and faster through the season, and to bring it to the championship and be one team when it comes to March. That’s what we’ll continue to focus on. Probably add one or two new skiers and continue to develop those that we have. It’s as simple as that.”