Skiing Heads to NCAA Championships in Vermont

OFFICIAL SCHEDULE
 

NCAA Championship Notes | Lobo Skiing Record Book

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The regular season complete, the RMISA Championships come on gone, all that’s left is the NCAA Championships in Stowe, Vermont starting on Wednesday, March 6 and continuing through Saturday, March 9.

The Lobos enter the Championships with several individual title contenders.  In men’s Nordic, Kornelius Grov and Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier have won six of the 10 Nordic events this season, including five by Grov.  Izquiero-Bernier has one win and three second-place finishes, and either one could win either event this week.  One probably can’t even count out Johan Eirik Meland, who had a fourth-place finish in a 5K freestyle this season.

On the alpine side, UNM has several title contenders.  On the women’s side, Sona Moravcikova has won a slalom event this season, and she is technically UNM’s No. 2 seeded skier behind Rebecca Fiegl.  In UNM’s last two meets, Fiegl finished second in both slalom events.  Antonia Wearmouth also had a top-five finish and could steal a national title in the giant slalom.  On the men’s side, Vegard Busendgal was the men’s Alpine MVP, and has won both the slalom and giant slalom in his career.  Olav Sanderberg has several top-6 finishes, and even Alex Barounos, who was a long-shot prior to the season to make the NCAAs, has turned in several top-10s, including a fourth place slalom finish.

While UNM’s women’s Nordic team is probably not hosting a title contender, both Savanna Fassio and Julie Spets have top-10 finishes this year and Dariya Kuznetsova has been extremely consistent in her team scoring.  Three years ago, Lobo Kati Roivas had no top-10s and then jumped to second place in the Nordic 15K Classical event, so anything can happen, particularly when the Championships are in the Eastern Corridor, where the altitude UNM trains at should help the Nordic racers.

For the NCAAs, there are 24 teams in total represented this year, and alpine races consist of 34 skiers, and Nordic races consists of 40.  In alpine, each race consists of two runs, and the times are combined.  Should a skier not complete one of the two runs, or miss a gate, they are eliminated from the competition.   The Nordic freestyle races are individual starts, where each skier starts 30 seconds after the previous skier.  The classical races are a mass start, where it is easier to gauge the winner.

The first place finisher garners 40 points for his or her team.  Second place through fourth place go down in increments of three, 37 for second, 34 for third and 31 for fourth.  The next four places are two points apart, 29 for fifth, 27 for sixth, 25 for seventh and 23 for eighth.  Places nine through 30 score one point less incrementally, 22 for ninth down to one point for 30th.  A first place finish is worth 40 points, nearly equal to a pair finishing in 10th and 11th, which would be 41 points.

New Mexico won the national title in 2004, and are looking to better the the seventh place finish of each of the last three seasons.  UNM has three third place finishes this season in five meets.