Alpine Preview: Buffs Ready For A Good, Albeit Abnormal 2021

BOULDER—The Colorado Buffaloes ski team will get its season underway later this week with alpine teams taking part in two meets from Sunday to Tuesday in Aspen and at Eldora.

And while the Buffs will be a little short-handed on the women's side for the opening set of races, coach Richard Rokos is nonetheless encouraged about his alpine teams in his final season as head coach of the Buffaloes.

"We've actually been able to train on snow a lot more than normal, maybe even double," Rokos said. "Everybody stayed over the break and we got in a lot of really good work."

One thing Rokos has done for 2021 is added depth to both teams. Each team will feature eight skiers competing for the Buffs in 2021 with the addition of Cassidy Gray to the women's alpine roster (more on her below).

The men's team is anchored by Joey Young and Filip Forejtek, both of whom have experience and have proven results on the snow the past couple of seasons. Young, a senior, is a two-time All-RMISA skier with 18 top 10 finishes including two race wins. A junior, Forejtek showed signs as a freshman before putting together a very solid sophomore season that saw him earn first-team All-America honors and just two-hundredths of a second away from winning an individual NCAA Championship before the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Forejtek has nine top-five finishes and six podium appearances.

The remaining six skiers, junior Max Bervy, sophomore Alex Birkner, freshman Louis Fausa, junior transfer Sky Kelsey, junior Bobby Ryan and freshman Chase Seymour, will all compete to determine, along with Forejtek and Young, which three Buffs will represent the team at the NCAA Championships. All five have experience or pedigree to suggest a tight internal race is in store for 2021.

"It's open hunting," Rokos said of his men's team. "Joey and Filip have been neck and neck in training and I like our depth on this team. They have been pushing each other hard in training and are right there with the other college teams who have been training at the same time. Everybody has had positive attitudes and have been enthusiastic, I'm excited to see what we can do when college competition begins."

Bervy has the most college experience of the group and has lettered twice for the Buffs and has five career top 20 finishes. Birkner and Ryan enter their second seasons on the Buffs team, Ryan his third in college after transferring from Boston College, and both showed flashes a season ago. Birkner had six top 20 finishes in his freshman season and Ryan had four top 20s and broke through for his first top 10 finish, a sixth-place showing in GS at the Denver Invitational.

Fausa, Kelsey, and Seymour are all newcomers to the team, Kelsey joining the Buffs after transferring from Alaska Anchorage, and Fausa and Seymour on the college circuit for the first time. Kelsey skied for UAA in 2019 before missing the 2020 season and had six top 20 and four top 10 finishes for the Seawolves. Fausa and Seymour are both new to college teams, but both have siblings that excelled on the college level. Fausa's sister, Chloe, helped the Utah team win the 2017 NCAA Championship, and Seymour's two brothers, Jett and Trey, ski for Denver where Jett was the 2019 NCAA Slalom Individual Champion.

On the women's side, the team could end up being one of the best on the college circuit, but probably won't be at full strength until February. The team lost Mikaela Tommy, arguably one of the best skiers the Buffs have ever had, but returns Stef Fleckenstein, who followed up a solid freshman season with a spectacular one as a sophomore last season, earning first-team All-RMISA after finishing 10 of 13 races in the top five a season ago with six podiums and one race win. She will miss the first series of races at the DU and CU Invitationals after suffering a shoulder injury in training last week.

She's joined on the team by her sister, Katie Fleckenstein, a freshman on this year's team. She joins the Buffs with 25 Nor Am starts to her credit and is also coming back from injury and hoping to be ready to go after the first set of races. The Buffs will have a total of two newcomers, with one additional skier who's expected to make an immediate impact joining the team ahead of the spring semester and making her college debut after this first series of races. Another newcomer from Canada, Gray will look to make an immediate impact coming to the Buffs from the Canadian National Team, where she's a teammate of Stef Fleckenstein on the NextGen squad.

Those three are joined by five other returning skiers, seniors Andrea Arnold and Isabelle Fidjeland, juniors Olivia Gerrard and Kaitlyn Harsch, and sophomore Emma Hammergaard. Arnold and Fidjeland are both in their fifth year of skiing after missing seasons at one point or another due to injury. Arnold is still returning to top form and may be hampered a bit by the format of skiers racing two full races in one day, a COVID protocol for regular-season meets in 2021, while Fidjeland is hoping to be fully healthy for the first time in her career at CU. She missed time with a knee injury and being hit by a car while riding a bike, skied her second season, and missed all of 2019 and most of 2020 due to injuries. She has skied at a high level when healthy and Rokos said she has looked good throughout preseason training.

Gerrard and Harsch both enter their third seasons on the team with Gerrard posting eight top 20 finishes in her career and Harsch breaking through a bit last year and getting her first top 10 in a slalom race at the DU Invitational last year, adding to her total of 13 career top 20 finishes. Hammergaard had a solid freshman season that culminated in her being selected for the Buffs NCAA team and had 10 top 20 and three top 10 finishes. She should benefit in her sophomore season not having to work her way through the seeding process.

One this is for certain, nothing will be normal about the 2021 collegiate ski season. But at the end of the day, competition is happening and the Buffs look to be in a good position to take advantage.

Teams will open the season with four straight days of racing with GS races happening in Aspen at the DU Invitational Sunday-Monday, Jan. 10-11, and slalom races at Eldora as part of CU's Spencer James Nelson Memorial Invitational on Tuesday-Wednesday, Jan. 12-13. Only one gender will compete each day and will compete in two separate races each day. Nordic teams get their respective seasons' underway on Jan. 17 at an RMISA Invitational in Utah. The Buffs will host Nordic action Feb. 5-6 in Aspen to close out its home meet.

Alpine Preview: Buffs Ready For A Good, Albeit Abnormal 2021

Players Mentioned

Andrea Arnold

Max Bervy

Alex Birkner

Louis Fausa

Isabelle Fidjeland

Katie Fleckenstein

Stef Fleckenstein

Filip Forejtek

Olivia Gerrard

Cassidy Gray

Emma Hammergaard

Kaitlyn Harsch

Sky Kelsey

Bobby Ryan

Chase Seymour

Mikaela Tommy

Joey Young

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