Colorado University Athletics
Skiers Tied For Sixth After Day One Of NCAA Championships
March 08, 2006 | Skiing
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS - The University of Colorado's two most consistent alpine skiers did their part here Wednesday, but Mount Werner got the best of many in the field, including a couple of Buffaloes, as CU stood in a sixth place tie after the first two events of the 53rd annual NCAA Skiing Championships.
Colorado, ranked second in the nation and the NCAA West Regional champion, came into these championships at a disadvantage, qualifying one less than the maximum 12 for the meet. Thus, being down one men's alpine performer, coupled with two falls, the Buffaloes ended the day down a bit in the standings, but certainly not out.
Arguably possessing the nation's strongest Nordic teams, they will be asked to get the Buffaloes back into things, as CU is the host school of this meet for the first time since 1993 and have had their sights set on winning here since being awarded the meet two years ago.
But Wednesday, the surprise leader was New Hampshire, leading at any point during the NCAA's for the first time ever. UNH compiled 161 points between the women's giant slalom, which it won as a team with 88 points, and the men's GS, good to lead defending NCAA champion Denver by a point-and-a-half. The Pioneers used strong showings by both their men and women in scoring 159? points, with Utah, on the strength of a team win in the men's GS, in third with 148.
Vermont (130) and New Mexico (126) round out the top five, while host and No. 2 ranked Colorado and Middlebury are tied for sixth with 109 points. Things will drastically change Thursday with the Nordic classical races, as New Hampshire qualified only one cross country skier and the more dominant teams are further down the standings, like Colorado.
That, and the fact that four of the teams ahead of the Buffaloes are skiing with full teams, and they will have to drop three scores (a maximum 21 are counted). If applied after one day, the standings actually look like this: New Hampshire (161), Colorado (109), Denver (101?), Vermont (100), Utah (92) and New Mexico (86). The difference is the UNH will score practically no Nordic points, and Colorado is very much alive but needs to ski close to perfect.
An early morning snowfall blanketed Mount Werner, the site of the giant slalom, with fresh snow, with it tapering off after sunrise. Visibility was not affected for the women's race, but the snow for the first run was soft with it hardening for the second run. The snow returned in the afternoon for the men and made for much poorer visibility from the last third of the first run through the completion of the race.
In the women's giant slalom, Colby College senior Abbi Lathrop was crowned national champion as she posted the fastest times in both the first and second runs in posting a total time of 2:16.85. That bested Denver's Florence Roujas by a tenth of a second, as the Pioneer's top alpine skier clocked in a 2:16.95 time. Defending GS champ, Vermont senior Jamie Kingsbury, earned third in a 2:17.68 time, as she was skiing for a third title having also won in 2003.
Lathrop had finished second in the event as a junior at Stowe in 2005, though she trailed Kingsbury by 2.5 seconds. Skiing out of the 12th start position, she recorded a 1:07.69 time for her first run, with only four competitors within 1.5 seconds of her effort. She then logged a 1:09.16 time her second trip down, with only Roujas, a junior (1:09.17), coming to within four-tenths of a second as the terrain began to harden. Lathrop became Colby's first-ever individual NCAA ski champion, men or women, alpine or Nordic.
"I was second last year so this time I really wanted to win," Lathrop said. "Last year, I was skiing really well and had a little mess up at the top of the second run. I felt I was in the running to win, but when I messed up the second run, it was very frustrating. So this year, I just wanted to put two really good runs together, and I think I did. I inspected the course well, and it was a really good course for me. I love to turn and it steep, and that's what I love and I was excited about that. I knew that if I executed the way I could that I would do well, so I'm really excited. It was great."
Two Colorado skiers rounded out the top five, as sophomore Lucie Zikova placed fourth in 2:18.21, with freshman and Steamboat native Lisa Perricone fifth in 2:19.22. Both moved up one spot in the final standings after their second runs. CU's third skier, junior Sabrina Mocellin, who had luck early when she was interfered with on her first run, fell near the end of her second and slipped to a 27th place finish. After being granted a rerun, she stood eighth after the first time down Mount Werner for all 34 skiers.
"I felt pretty good," Zikova said. "I didn't have that great of a first run. Neither the second run, really, so I just skied okay. It was just all right, I didn't ski great, I didn't ski badly. I think this was what I could do on this hill, I don't really like this hill.
"The new snow really didn't affect me," Zikova added. "The first run was a little softer but it was not bad. The second run there was no new snow in the tracks so it was really hard and icy. I think that even though Sabrina is our best GS skier and she basically almost didn't finish and we still almost were leading is a good sign for us. Lisa and I are slalom-focused and we love the hill. Anything can happen Friday."
"We suffered a little bit on the women's side," CU head coach Richard Rokos said. "There was an unfortunate incident with Sabrina having interference with a course worker on her first run. We asked for a rerun, which she got, but this is a very tough hill and it takes a lot out of you. She was very tired near the end of her second run and she crashed right before the end."
As far as Zikova and Perricone were concerned, Rokos was pleased with their efforts. "They had solid performances, and skied close to their best. Where they finished was pretty consistent with what they have done all season. But once Sabrina fell, they had to ski a little more conservative on their second runs. They were patient, didn't force things, and did what they needed to maintain their positions."
In the men's giant slalom, the snow picked back up again causing visibility problems about two-thirds of the way into the first run. But it didn't affect Utah's Scott Veenis, as the freshman won in a two-run time of 2:12.19, almost a full second ahead of Denver's Francesco Ghedina, who grabbed runner-up honors in 2:13.13.
"I started third (in the first run), and it was a great track and the snow was awesome," Veenis said. "I could let it go a little more than on my second run. I also had way better visibility (on the first run), the light wasn't as flat so you could see the bumps coming and anticipate. The second time, I felt like I was holding on a lot more, and on the first run I was more aggressive."
Freshman Jean-Francois Ferreira, who replaced Patrick Duran who suffered a broken leg in training on this same hill on Sunday, finished 24th in 2:20.41. Josh Bryan was CU's other skier, but he also had some bad luck. Bryan, also a freshman, suffered a fall during his first run that included falling hard on his bindings, flipping in the air and losing both skis. He managed to gather himself in, reattach his equipment and finish the run, ending 31st in 3:11.45.
"The guys were a different story,' Rokos said. "They skied more under pressure, and they didn't cope too well. They both tried to improve their starting position for the second run, and it didn't really work for either of them. We didn't have much of a choice; we either had to put everything on the line or settle for a mediocre result. So we tried to give it our all, and unfortunately it didn't come through."
Though he wouldn't use it as an excuse, Rokos did say Duran's injury had an affect on the team. He suffered a spiral fracture of the femur in five places and required surgery the same day. "Skiing is a high risk sport, we all know that," Rokos said. "But when something like that happens to someone so close to you, it definitely has a negative effect."
To the point where the coaches brought in a counselor to help the team deal with what happened to their teammate.
"This is kind of a really hard race for everybody," Ferreira said. "It was a hard course for everybody, and it's really easy for a mistake to happen, and that's what did happen to Josh. I had mistakes in both runs... not as much as Josh, but I did have mistakes. We just tried to do our best to win some points for the team.
"I would say my specialty is the slalom," he added, "So I am really very excited for Friday. I will start better and I will hopefully do better for my team."
The top five finishers in each race earned first-team All-America honors, while the sixth through 10th place finishers garner second-team status. Zikova, a first-team All-American in the slalom last year, thus added that honor to her GS resume, while Perricone earned it as a true freshman.
"Being 50 points behind seems like a lot, but with three more days to go, and scores having to be dropped, anything can happen," Rokos added. "In slalom, anything can happen to anyone, you can be the lucky one, you can be the unfortunate one. Our Nordic teams are solid and should get us back into the hunt tomorrow, and we can calculate close to what they can do on Saturday. So what happens in the slalom might dictate what we can do as a team."
Nordic coordinator Bruce Cranmer doesn't believe CU's sixth place standing means any added pressure on his skiers.
"More pressure... I don't think so," he said. "I just tell them that we can't worry about what is going on. It's the first day of competition, and the NCAA's can always be a little bit weird. We just need to focus on what we can do and ski our best. It's that simple, focus only on what we can and not worry about things we don't have any control over."
The women are up first Thursday with their 5-kilometer competition at 9:30 a.m. MST, with the men racing a 10K at 11:30.
The standings have usually changed in the nine previous years under the current scoring format; the first day leader has gone on to win just three times: Colorado in 1999, and Denver in both 2001 and 2002, the only two occasions the same school led wire-to-wire in winning the title. While the lowest place a school rallied to win from after day one was fifth (DU in 2000), the Pioneers were 67 down that year after day one and pulled off the win.
NCAA Championship Team Scores-1. New Hampshire 161; 2. Denver 159?; 3. Utah 148; 4. Vermont 130; 5. New Mexico 126; 6. Colorado and Middlebury 109; 8. Dartmouth 103; 9. Bates 85; 10. Alaska-Anchorage 82; 11. Nevada 80; 12. Williams 64?; 13. Colby 59; 14. Montana State 44; 15. Boise State 24; 16. Western State 19.
Women's Giant Slalom-1. Abbi Lathrop, Colby, 2:16.85; 2. Florence Roujas, DU, 2:16.95; 3. Jamie Kingsbury, UVM, 2:17.68; 4. Lucie Zikova, CU, 2:18.21; 5. Lisa Perricone, CU, 2:19.22; 6. Spela Bertoncelj, MSU, 2:20.41; 7. Kristina Repcinova, UAA, 2:20.47; 8. Stephanie Vaughan, UNH, 2:20.75; 9. Jilyne McDonald, UVM, 2:21.59; 10. Michelanne Shields, Dart., 2:21.80; 11. Leanne Smith, UNH, 2:22.46; 12. Allison Empey, UAA, 2:22.66; 13. Sydney Mikkelson, UNH, 2:24.07; 14. Mattie Ford, Midd., 2:24.69; 15. Karine Falck-Pedersen, DU, 2:25.15; 16. Zuzana Charvatova, BSU, 2:25.17; 17. Megan Papineau, Bates, 2:25.54; 18. Kristen Poehling, Midd., 2:25.60; 19. Amy Beresford, UNM, 2:26.28; 20. Erika Hogan, Utah, 2:26.69; 21. Kimberly Stephens, Utah, 2:27.26; 22. Whitney Fahy, Bates, 2:27.34; 23. Mikaela Grassl, Utah, 2:28.02; 24. Elizabeth Thompson, Bates, 2:28.63; 25. Kathrin Spendier, UNM, 2:29.98; 26. Sealy Livermore, Dart., 2:35.08; 27. Sabrina Mocellin, CU, 2:48.39; 28. Hilary McCloy, UVM, 2:51.16; 29. Jennifer Tank, DU, 3:00.88; 30. Karin Ohlin, UNM, 3:26.38; 31. Stefanie Klocker, UAA, 6:51.49. Did Not Finish?Alexandra Fucigna, Dart. (first run), Cecily Lowenthal, Will. (second run); Disqualified?Megan Hughes, Dart. (second run).
Men's Giant Slalom-1. Scott Veenis, Utah, 2:12.19; 2. Francesco Ghedina, DU, 2:13.13; 3. Lars Loeseth, UNM, 2:13.57; 4. Scott Hume, UNR, 2:13.75; 5. Sean McNamara, UNH, 2:13.86; 6. Karl Johnson, Dart., and Eric Mann, Will., 2:14.00; 8. Paul Epstein, UVM, 2:14.68; 9. Charles Christianson, Will., 2:14.98; 10. Luke Patterson, UNR, 2:15.13; 11. Gaspar Perricone, Utah, 2:15.69; 12. Tor Fodnesbergene, UNM, 2:15.81; 13. Andrew Wagner, Midd., 2:16.39; 14. David Chodunsky, Dart., and Todd Ligare, DU, 2:16.42; 16. Will McDonald, Utah, 2:16.60; 17. Andrew Everett, Midd., 2:17.34; 18. John Buchar, DU, 2:17.88; 19. Joe Dunn, UNH, 2:18.93; 20. Leo Menard, Bates, 2:19.07; 21. Andre Hokholt, WSC, 2:19.31; 22. Greg Hardy, UVM, 2:19.65; 23. John Martz, UNH, 2:19.73; 24. Jean-Francois Ferreira, CU, 2:20.41; 25. Alex Mach, UNM, 2:20.50; 26. Cameron Barnes, UNR, 2:20.55; 27. Charlie Reed, Colby, 2:20.89; 28. Timothee Theaux, UAA, 2:22.00; 29. Clayton Reed, Midd., 2:46.85; 30. Cory Harris, MSU, 2:48.65; 31. Josh Bryan, CU, 3:11.45; 32. Sean McKenna, Bates, 3:50.63; 33. Jody Centauro, Colby, 8:03.79. Did Not Finish?Erik Johnson, Dart. (first run). Disqualified-- Zachary Brown, UVM (second run).
