Colorado University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Skiers Ready For National Title Defense
March 05, 2007 | Skiing
ATTITASH, N.H. - The defending national champion University of Colorado ski team arrived here late Saturday after an all day trek, hoping that its week-long sojourn will produce a second consecutive NCAA title and the school's 18th in the sport of skiing.
The Buffalo contingent gathered at 4 a.m. last Saturday morning at its headquarters on the Boulder campus to set out east, first driving to Denver, then flying to Boston through Chicago, and then driving the last three hours to their housing at the base of Bear Mountain, site of this week's alpine events. The Nordic events will take place about eight miles up the road in nearby Jackson.
The team has had two good days of practice since arriving, with a third on tap for Tuesday.
"Everybody is skiing good, and everyone is healthy," head coach Richard Rokos said. "Maria (Grevsgaard, the west's top woman's Nordic skier) looks just awesome in practice; I wish we could count her result twice. It was warm here today, so the snow was a little soft, but subzero temperatures are on the way and things should be just right by the time we start competing."
"It's kind of scary, because we don't have anything to blame (if we don't win)," he joked. "Every one is a great state of mind and everyone is excited to go out and do some damage. It feels like everyone is peaking?we had some slack a couple weeks ago, so if that had to happen, it came at the right time. Everyone is back from that little bump in the road, so the sky is the limit."
Unlike most sports, part of the trip includes creativity when it comes to meals; the coaches made dinner for the team Sunday night, with the student-athletes cooking for the coaches Monday. Tuesday night, it's on the NCAA at the annual banquet the night before the first event.
"Our goal never changes, it's always the same, we're going after the trophy," said Rokos, who has won five national championships on his watch at CU, including back-to-back crowns on one other occasion, in 1998-99. That's tied for the second most in CU history with current cross country coach Mark Wetmore, and trailing the seven won in skiing under Bill Marolt. Colorado has won 23 overall in its athletic history.
"We are bringing at least three people that can be on the podium?Lucie (Zikova), Maria and Matt (Gelso), and probably more, but those three proved it consistently during the season. In the case of those three, I would very much believe that they'll match what they did during the season. So if that is true to form, what happens with the rest of the team will obviously decide our chances to win. Points for second and third place usually decide how high you can shoot for."
A total of 22 schools will be participating in New Hampshire this week, but only four schools qualified the NCAA maximum of 12: CU, Dartmouth, Utah and Vermont; the four are an all-time low. Denver qualified 11, Middlebury and Montana State 10, and Nevada and New Mexico nine; no other school had more than six.
Colorado has qualified a full team for the first time since 2003, and even though the Buffaloes became the first to win a title short the maximum in winning with 11 last year, Rokos certainly isn't counting the proverbial chickens before they're hatched.
"A full team is still not any ticket to the title, it just gives you more peace of mind," he said. "This year, with the slalom wrapping up the championships, it's going to be mental rollercoaster until the last minute. It's all about how the whole week develops. Having slalom as the concluding event makes for more excitement, more nervousness. Statistics show that about thirty percent in slalom usually DNF (did not finish), so things can change and shake out dramatically."
Gelso (men's Nordic), Grevsgaard (women's Nordic) and Zikova (women's alpine) all earned No. 1 seeds out of the west, with four others earning top six seeds. Zikova is out to defend her 2006 title in the slalom, while junior Kit Richmond is gunning to do the same in the freestyle. The Buffs tied their school best with four individual titles last winter.
CU's roster breaks down by eligibility into three juniors, four sophomores and five freshmen, as the nine underclassmen make this the youngest team Rokos has ever taken to a national championship meet, topping the seven just last year. This is also the first time that CU will have no seniors participate in the nationals since '83.
While obviously the first appearance in an NCAA meet for the five freshmen, the seven others have eight national appearances among them, so there is a good balance of veterans and newcomers. Zikova, a junior, will be skiing in her third NCAA Championships, with all six other upperclassmen making their second appearance: Josh Bryan and Lisa Perricone (alpine), and Grevsgaard, Karl Nygren, Lenka Palanova and Richmond (Nordic).
The five first-timers for the Buffs include Gelso and Kristin Ronnestrand in cross country and Heidi Hillenbrand, Stefan Hughes and Drew Roberts in alpine.
"For the alpine guys, with Drew and Stefan being veterans of the national team and coming from that level, they were bound to have an immediate impact and they both proved it in their first few races," Rokos reflected. "Now comes time to confirm it again. The whole group has been elevated as a unit. It's definitely a different feeling instead of being short one or two as was the case one time. The women had another fine season, qualifying five again, and they're looking to ski their best at NCAA's. They didn't match their results to the degree they did a year ago, but I think that was mostly due to traveling to Italy (for the World University Games) in the middle of the year. Lucie was the top skier in the west and it was something to just watch her ski."
"The cross country teams had a pretty steady season," Rokos added. "Matt was consistently top three, and Kit was right there behind him, very steady, just sidetracked by some illness in the middle of the year. Karl transferred in and helped us, earned the third spot as he improved along the way, and he will help us at NCAA's.
"When we were in Reno and did the awards for the whole season, Maria made so many trips to the podium that it looked like a fashion show," he recounted. "She was walking the aisle back and forth, back and forth. Kristin comes into nationals with her best results at the right time, and she will build confidence from those. She's healthy and extremely engaged. Lenka is coming out of a little hole, she over-trained a bit, but at this point there's nothing to stop her. We think by NCAA's that she will be skiing her best this season."
Colorado and Denver dueled for the most part all winter in the west, with Utah coming on strong at the end. The Buffaloes won the opener in Utah, edging the host Utes, with Montana State up next. But due to weather issues at Bozeman and then later at the first scheduled giant slalom makeup race, the meet was stretched over 33 days, with CU again the victor. DU's meet wound up being completed prior to the MSU event, and the host Pioneers seized the opportunity to snuff out Colorado's five-meet winning streak, edging the Buffs by 12. The Pioneers won the UNM by a western record 107? points, in part due to illness that ravaged the CU team, and then came back and won the RMISA Championship in a tight battle over CU and Utah.
"The season was interrupted with the World University Games, and a couple of the Nordics went to U.S. Nationals. We (CU) seemed to have more participation in these events than most, so all those trips added a little pressure and a lot time challenges on us," Rokos said. "The other teams typically don't do as much as we do, so they're a little more rested. But that's the way skiing is, we enjoy those trips and opportunities, and we probably sacrifice some things in the intercollegiate part of the experience. But I would never think of missing out on those things because they experiences and memories they will have for the rest of their lives.
"Our goal at the regional was to protect our skiers in alpine and do what we could to solidify our qualifying positions," he continued. "Going in, we only had two secure sports with several others on the bubble, so we traded a run at the regional title to qualify five guys in men's alpine. So I am happy with that; out top three seeds (who are Nos. 1, 3 and 6) started deep into the 30s and scored something like 50 points fewer than usual between them, so it was not reflective of what we're capable of doing or what we did all season."
Individually, Colorado skiers won 14 of the 38 races in the western regular season, with DU performers winning 11; seven schools in all had individual champions, as New Mexico (4), Utah (3), Western State (3), Alaska (2) and Montana State (1) also had skiers top the podium. CU's Grevsgaard won the most titles, seven, including a sweep of the season's five classical races.
It was a different story in the east; Dartmouth, flying high from a third place finish in last year's NCAA meet, won all six carnivals as Big Green skiers captured 25 of the 42 races en route to winning the eastern crown. Schools from the west have won the last 12 crowns, dating back to Vermont's 1994 title, but Dartmouth is a definite contender to wrestle the trophy back for the Northeast.
"Typically, Dartmouth is very strong in alpine, but the word is they're much improved in Nordic," Rokos said. "But until we get into competition with the eastern schools directly, it's hard to figure out our chances or their chances since there is never anything to compare during the season. The same with UVM, until we race them, we don't know them. Regionally, DU has a very strong team, they are experienced and capable of skiing very well. How much of a deficiency not having one Nordic girl for them will be a question that plays out during the week. Utah qualified a whole team, and came on strong on late, and we'll see if they'll be able to capitalize on it."
The freestyle cross country races open the NCAA Championships on Wednesday, with the men's 10k first up at 7:00 a.m. MST, followed by the women's 5k at 9 a.m.; both will take place at the Jackson Cross Country Center. Alpine takes center stage on Thursday, as the giant slaloms will be run through completion: the women start at 7:00 a.m., followed by the men at 10:30. The classical cross country races will be on Friday, with the women's 15k at 7:00 a.m., followed by the men's 15k at 9:00. The slalom races will finish off the NCAA meet on Saturday: the first runs are at 7:00 a.m. (men) and 8:15 (women); second runs follow at 10:15 a.m. and 11:30, respectively.
The scoring format has changed, as in the past only the top 21 scores counted toward team totals; now, those schools that qualified full teams can count all 24, and those with 11 skiers can count 22. That's a direct benefit to those who qualified the maximum, but still does not make it impossible for those who did not; Colorado won by 98 points last year, a margin that still would have been 75 had all scores been counted.