Utah Takes Mid-Point Lead At NCAA Championships

Thursday, March 10, 2022 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

PARK CITY & MIdway, Utah—The host Utah Utes lead the NCAA Ski Championships at the midpoint after both giant slalom and classic races took place on Thursday with three RMISA teams atop the team standings.

Utah leads with 286.5 points followed by Colorado in second with 262 and Denver in third with 249. Vermont is fourth with 235 and then fifth place Middlebury is more than 100 points back of the Catamounts with 131.5 points.

Alaska Fairbanks had a solid day finishing tied for first in the men's 20K classic race and are sixth with 108 points, the top in the standings for a school with only one discipline here.

Utah's Novie McCabe won the women's 5K classic race and Colorado picked up two individual NCAA Championships with Magdalena Luczak and Filip Forejtek taking home giant slalom titles.

The RMISA dominated the day, picking up 26 of 40 overall All-America honors and 16 of 20 first-team honors, including all five in men's GS and four of five in women's GS and men's classic.

Utah won the women's 5K classic race as a team, as Sophia Laukli tied for second and Sydney Palmer-Leger taking sixth behind McCabe. Colorado was second with Hanna Abrahamsson and Weronika Kaleta both pick up All-America honors.

The men's race was then a close affair with four teams within two points, three of them RMISA teams. Alaska Fairbanks and Denver both scored 76 points with the Nanook's Christopher Kalev and Mike Ophoff picking up first-team All-America honors an the Pioneer's Andreas Kirkeng eanring first team honors and Bernhard Flaschberger earning second-team honors. Colorado and Vermont both then tied for third with 74 points as the Buffs' Magnus Boee picked up first-team All-America honors and Will Koch second team.

Luzcak then won the women's GS on the strength of winning both the first and second run, earning a relatively large margin of victory of 1.25 seconds. DU's Katie Hensen was second, Utah's Kaite Parker and Kaja Norbye third and fifth and MSU's Nellie Talbot fourth. Westmister's Denise Dingsleder was sixth and Galena Wardle was seventh, giving the RMISA the top seven finishers in the race. Denver won the race with 69 points, Utah had 63 and Colorado 62.

The men's GS finished the day and Forejtek's win put the Buffs in third with 59 points, behind Utah (75) and Denver (63). Utah's Gustav Vollo took second and teammate Joachim Lien sixth, picking up a first- and second-team All-America honor respectively. MSU was third with Riley Seger while Tobias Kogler from DU took fourth. Westminster's Mikkel Solbakken, the defending champion, finished seventh for the Griffins.

Alpine returns to action Friday with the slalom races starting at 9:30 a.m. Nordic teams close out the championship Saturday with the 15K women's and 20K men's freestyle races.