Indianapolis, Ind. — The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Skiing Committee announced today the 74 men and 74 women selected to participate in the 2015 National Collegiate Men’s and Women’s Skiing Championships, to be held March 11-14 at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, New York. The University of New Mexico qualified a full squad for the championships, with three skiers each for men’s and women’s Nordic and three each for men’s and women’s alpine. The NCAA championships will be hosted by St. Lawrence University and the Olympic Regional Development Authority.
Participants are selected on a regional basis from two designated regions for Alpine skiing (East and West Regions) and three designated regions for Nordic skiing (Central, East and West Regions). Bids are awarded to regions using a formula determined by the skiing committee. A maximum of 12 student-athletes (three per gender per discipline) may participate from an institution.
The Lobos will be sending three titlists from the season, including Emilie Cedervärn, who won four Nordic races in Alaska, including both the freestyle and classical races at the RMISA/NCAA West Region Championships. Cedervärn will be joined by Eva Sever Rus, who won the NCAA title in the freestyle last year, and Jessica Gnüchtel. On the men’s Nordic side, Mats Resaland won a Nordic title this season (the freestyle at the Jade Enterprises/UNM Invitational) and teammate Aljaz Praznik had a top finish of second. Aku Nikander is the third skier, and he is the reigning U.S. Open Nordic champion.
Sever Rus will be competing in her second NCAA Championship while Cedervärn and Gnüchtel are in their first. On the men’s side it will be Resaland’s third NCAA Championship while Praznik and Nikander are in their second. UNM’s Nordic squad is so deep that Anni Nord on the women’s side and Christian Otto on the men’s side, who had each gone to three NCAAs each in their careers, did not make it this season.
For alpine, Mateja Robnik won an RMISA giant slalom qualifier this season and also had a couple of second place finishes, and she will lead the women’s alpine squad. Newcomer Sara Ottosson will compete along with sophomore Sydney Staples. Both Staples and Ottosson are competing in their first NCAAs while Robnik is in her third. The men’s alpine squad will have Sean Horner to lead the way in his second NCAA, while teammates Carl-Johan Öster and Juho-Pekka Penttinen will be appearing in their first.
New Mexico is one of seven squads to qualify a full 12-person team, and six of those are from the RMISA (Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association). Along with UNM, Montana State, Colorado, Utah, Denver, Alaska Anchorage have full squads, as does Vermont, which finished second last year. Middlebury and Dartmouth have 10 skiers.
Overall there are 40 Nordic skiers each for the men and women, and 34 alpine skiers. Scoring is based on the top 30 in each race, with 40 points for first, 37 for second, then it goes 34-31-29-27-25-23-22-21-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Last year UNM finished third at the NCAA Championships in Utah.
Nordic events will be held at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. The women’s five-kilometer and men’s 10-kilometer freestyle cross-country races will be conducted March 11. The women’s 15-kilometer and men’s 20-kilometer classical races will be held March 13.
Alpine events will run at Whiteface Mountain. The men’s and women’s giant slaloms will be held March 12, with the men’s and women’s slaloms conducted March 14.
This year’s skiing championships will be webcast live on NCAA.com. Visit http://www.ncaa.com/liveschedule to watch all the action.