Lobos Qualify Full 12 to NCAA Skiing Championships

Complete NCAA Field and Selections

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The University of New Mexico Ski Team is one of only six schools to qualify a full complement of 12 skiers to the 2019 NCAA National Championships, hosted in Stowe, Vermont March 6-9.  The Lobos are one of four RMISA teams to qualify a full squad.
 
Overall, 24 different schools will be represented at the NCAA meet.  Of the eight RMISA schools in the championships, UNM is joined by Utah, Colorado and Denver with full squads of 12 skiers (six each, three men and three women, in alpine and Nordic).  Vermont just missed qualifying a full team with 11, Alaska Anchorage qualified 10 and Montana State qualified nine.
 
Qualifying for the alpine events on the men’s side was Vegard Busengdal, who is the leading scorer on the men’s side with 254.5 points.  Busengdal owns three podiums on the year, and he has been UNM’s top downhill racer over the last three years.  This will be his third NCAA qualification, although he was a late 2017 NCAA scratch after a practice run accident.  UNM’s second qualifier was Alex Barounos, a senior who until this year hadn’t made a major impact.  Barounos over his first three seasons with UNM scored 136 points with no top-10 runs and eight top-20 finishes.  This year he has scored 119 points with four top-10s and seven top-20s.  The senior from Steamboat Springs will be making his first postseason appearance.
 
The final men’s alpine racer to qualify is Olav Sanderberg.  The rookie out of Norway is second on the team with 200 points, and he has recorded five top-10 finishes.  He also has been a top-three counter in all 10 scoring races this season.
 
On the women’s side, Rebecca Fiegl will look to continue her hot streak into her second NCAAs.  Fiegl has second place finishes in the last two races, and she leads all UNM female alpine racers with 230 points.  She has a team-best eight top-10 finishes.  Right behind her is Soňa Moravčíková, who has scored 227 points on the season and earned an RMISA Skier of the Week honor as well.  Moravčíková also has eight top-10 finishes, plus a win at the UNM Invitational in the slalom.
 
UNM’s third skier to qualify is a freshman in Antonia Wearmouth.  Wearmouth, from Canada, only scored 32 points on the season, but her racing in a pair of giant slalom qualifiers that didn’t score team points put her over the top over teammates Katharine Irwin and Haley Cutler, both of whom made NCAAs last season.
 
On the Nordic side, it was a little more cut and dried, especially on the men’s side.  Kornelius Grøv and Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier were the top two qualifiers in the West Region, and easily made the field.  Grøv has tied the UNM record for Nordic wins in a season with five (four freestyle, one classic) and he leads the team with 353 points.  He has finished outside of the top-5 in a race just once in 10 races this season.
 
Izquierdo-Bernier will be in his second NCAA meet, and he has had just as remarkable a season as he has combined to form of the greatest 1-2 punches in NCAA Nordic history.  Izquierdo-Bernier has scored 315.5 points this season, and he has nine top-10 finishes (his only miss was in the sprints, a non-traditional race).  He has a classic win and four second-place finishes on the season.
 
UNM’s third Nordic men’s skier is freshman Johan Eirik Meland, who has turned into a reliable third skier for the Lobos.  A former biathlete, Meland has 142 points, scoring in nine of 10 races with one top-10 result (a fourth-place finish) and five top-20s.
 
On the women’s side, it’s three freshmen as Julie Spets, Savanna Fassio and Dariya Kuznetsova all qualified.  Spets was the top qualifier, although she was second on the team in points with 120 as she missed three starts early in the season.  She recorded one of UNM’s two top-10 this season, with UNM’s second qualifier Savanna Fassio getting the other.  Fassio led the team with 153 points and she was the only skiers to compete in all 10 races.  UNM’s third qualifier was Kuznetsova, who was third on the team with 82 points.
 
The National Championships will take place March 6-9, hosted by the University of Vermont.  The championships start with the Nordic freestyle races at Trapp Family Lodge on Wednesday, March 6.  On Thursday, March 7 the giant slalom will take place at Stowe Mountain Resort.  On Friday, March 8, the Nordic teams will be back in action with the 15K and 20K classic races, and on Saturday, March 9 the final event of the NCAA Championships will be the slalom at Stowe Mountain.