Skiing Improves To Second

Crested Butte - Colorado's women's alpine team placed three skiers in the top 10 while the CU men had their three scorers in the top 11 as the Buffs earned 151 much needed points from today's slalom and passed both Utah and New Mexico to improve to second, just four and-a-half points behind Denver after six events at the Western State Invitational which concluded here Saturday.

A power outage at Crested Butte has delayed the results of the final two events, the men's and women's nordic freestyle races and the final team standings, until Sunday.

After six events, defending national champion Denver leads the team race with 424.5 points, while Colorado trails the Pioneers with 420. While only 40 points separated the West Region's strongest programs after Friday's four events, a mere 23.5 points is the difference between the first and fourth teams Saturday as New Mexico fell to third (412) and Utah (401) to fourth.

Brad Hogan won his second race in as many meets as the freshman won today's men's slalom in a combined time of 1:15.94 after blistering both the first (35.86) and second (40.08) runs in the fastest times of the day. He finished ahead of Denver's Dominik Schweiger (1:16.61) and teammate Jed Schuetze (1:16.72) while Tyler Shepherd rounded out CU's scoring with a two-run time of 1:17.61 to finish 11th, a single place ahead of Fritz Ernemann (1:17.80) who finished 12th.

Sparked by the day's fastest second-run (40.92), Mia Cullman rebounded from last weekend's 35th place finish in the slalom at Eldora to finish second this afternoon in 1:21.99, her seventh top-10 finish of the year and second-straight runner-up finish as New Mexico's Kathrin Spenier proved to be today's spoiler, taking the women's title in 1:21.62. Amy Beresford clinched eighth in a two-run time of 1:22.99 while Erika Hogan finished 10th (1:23.03). With top-20 finishes, Tove Pashkowski (13th), Erin McEachren (17th) and Sarah Fischer (20th) rounded out Colorado's efforts.

"Our alpine skiers did very well," complimented head coach Richard Rokos. "But we have a little problem with our Nordic skiers as we just don't have enough people. The fact that we raced with half of our team on the cross country side, we did pretty well. The most important thing for us today was to qualify skiers for NCAAs, which we did. The meet itself was secondary."

Colorado skied the nordic freestyle races without the services of Henrik Hoye, Norbert Pelc, Muriele Huberli and Brooke Rygg, who all either injured or fighting sickness. Unofficially, Erling Christiansen, Josh Smullin and Nick Sterling all finished among the top-15 in today's race while Jana Rehmaa and laire Critchley carried the women's torch to a pair of top-10 efforts.

Both disciplines will enjoy a long awaited break as the Buffs don't hit the slopes again until they christen the postseason, Feb. 21-22, at the NCAA West Regional Championships to be decided at Winter Park.

"The main goal for the alpine team, and especially those that went to Italy, is training maintenance and to catch up on school. For our cross country team it's to get healthy and heal any injuries. But we can only take three cross country skiers to NCAA's, so thanks to our lack of depth, that may take care of itself," concluded Rokos.

WESTERN STATE INVITATIONAL TEAM SCORES (after 6 events)-1. Denver 424.5; 2. COLORADO 420; 3. New Mexico 412; 4. Utah 401; 5. Alaska-Anchorage 274; 6. Western State 228.5; 7. Nevada 219; 8. Whitman 197; 9. Montana State 102.

Men's Slalom- 1. Brad Hogan, CU, 1:15.94; 2. Dominik Schweiger, DU, 1:16.61; 3. Jed Schuetze, CU, 1:16.72; 4. Christian Jensen, UNM, 1:16.86; 4. Ben Brown, WSC, 1:16.86. CU Finishers- 11. Tyler Shepherd, 1:17.61; 12. Fritz Ernemann, 1:17.80 DNF-Michael Read, Tahir Bisic.

Women's Slalom- Kathrin Spendier, UNM, 1:21.62; 2. Mia Cullman, CU, 1:21.99; 3. Lina Johansson, Utah, 1:22.02; 4. Sophie Ormond, DU, 1:22.31; 5. Quincy Young, Nevada, 1:22.38. CU Finishers-- 8. Amy Beresford, 1:22.89; 10. Erika Hogan, 1:23.03; 13. Tove Pashkowski, 1:23.84; 17. Erin McEachren, 1:24.87; 20. Sarah Fisher, 1:25.72.

Women's Freestyle- Results Not Available
Men's Freestyle- Results Not Available