Boee Wins Program's 100th Individual Title As Buffs Take Second At NCAA Championships

JACKSON, N.H. – Sophomore Magnus Boee capped one of the best seasons in CU history by winning the men's 20K freestyle race, his second individual National Championship in three days and the 100th in Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team history. The Buffs put up a valiant final-day fight for the title and in the end finished second to Utah by 31.5 points here Saturday at Jackson Nordic Center to close out the 2021 NCAA Ski Championships.

The Buffs lead the nation in individual championships and are the first school to reach 100. Boee's win is also the 10th of his historic season, tying the record for all men's skiers in CU history that was first set over 60 years ago by Dave Butts in 1960. Only Line Selnes and Maria Grevsgaard, both women's Nordic skiers, have won more races in a season, each with 11.

The Buffs entered the day 24.5 points behind the Utes, a tall task given the Utes strength in Nordic, particularly on the women's side. The Utah women, which posted a perfect score of 111 points on Thursday, were again boosted again by a 1-3 finish but the Buffs hung with them, as freshman Weronika Kaleta finished seventh while junior Ezra Smith took 11th and sophomore Anna-Maria Dietze 12th. The Utes won the race 86-64 over the Buffs to open up a 46.5 point advantage with the men's race remaining.

Boee and Utah's Samuel Hendry battled it out in the men's race, as they have all season. Hendry won the only two races Boee didn't, and with one 5K lap left of the 20K race, they were within six seasons of each other but Boee hit another gear and picked up another eight seconds on the final lap to win by 15.9 seconds. Sophomore Oyvind Haugan finished sixth to earn second-team All-America honors and freshman Will Koch took 13th. Koch had dropped to 21st place at the midpoint of the race, but battled back the second half of the race to pick off eight skiers ahead of him.

The men did beat Utah and won the race with 85 points to the Utes 70, but it wasn't enough to overcome the deficit as the Pac-12 two's schools that sponsor skiing finished first and second in the 17-school competition. When all the snow settled, the Utes picked up 554 points to the Buffs 522.5. Colorado did then have an 80.5 point advantage over third place Denver (422) with Alaska Anchorage moving up from sixth to finish fourth with 411 points. Montana State (383.5) edged out Vermont (351) to give the RMISA the top five spots in the final standings.

With Boee's two titles and Cassidy Gray's title in the women's GS race, the Buffs had three individual champions for the 15th time in school history, including the eighth time under coach Richard Rokos. Boee became the 24th Colorado skier to win multiple individual championships and the 10th two sweep two races at the NCAA Championships, including becoming just the second to do so in men's Nordic competition along with Mads Stroem in 2016.

Counting Boee's two regional championships, he becomes just the fifth skier in CU history to sweep both regional and national championships, joining Stephan Heinzsch (1977, men's alpine), Jana Wienberger (2006, women's Nordic), Maria Grevsgaard (2008, women's Nordic) and Mads Stroem (2016, men's Nordic). Coach Jana Wienberger has coached the most three recent skier to accomplish the feat after doing so herself her senior season.

WHAT IT MEANS: It's never the Colorado Ski Team's goal to finish second, but a runner-up finish at the NCAA Championships is still a great accomplishment. Along with 20 National Championships (19 NCAA, 1 AIAW), the Buffs have 13 more runner-up finishes at Nationals. Since 2006, the Buffs have four National Championships, seven runner-up finishes and just three other finishes, two third place and one fourth. The Buffs have finished four of the last five NCAA Championships as the runner-up. Given everything that had to happen this season, even having a season is an accomplishment in and of itself, much less staying healthy enough to compete at a high level and prepare for the national championships.

UP NEXT: The 2021 college season is complete, but several Buffs will likely continue to ski competitively. The U.S. Alpine National Championships will take place in April in Aspen, and some more continental cup or World Cup races may be on tap for several Buffs.

RICHARD ROKOS NOTES:

Today marked the final competition for Richard Rokos as CU's head coach, completing his 31st season at the helm of the program and 35th season at CU. He finished his career with eight National Championships, 20 RMISA Championships and 73 meet wins, compiling an astonishing dual record of 1,547-186 (.893).
Rokos' skiers have won 46 Individual National Championships, 65 Individual Regional Championships, and 364 race wins while compiling 290 All-America honors.

ALL-AMERICAN NOTES:

The Buffs picked up three more All-America honors, the 522nd, 523rd and 524th in CU history. It's give the Buffs 11 honors for the championship.
Boee and Haugan's horrors give CU 298 men's honors, and Kaleta's honor is the 226th for a women's skier.
Boee joins Stef Fleckenstein as earning two first-team honors at this championship. Haugan joins those two and Forejtek as the four Buffs who earned two All-America honors this week.
The three honors give the Buffs 107 awards in freestyle action, 54 by women's skiers and 53 by men's skiers.
The Buffs now have 173 men's first-team honors and 304 overall first-team honors.
The Buffs 11 All-Americans were second most of any school in 2021 behind 16 from Utah. Vermont had 10 and both Denver and Alaska Anchorage had eight apiece.
The Buffs had six Nordic honors and five alpine honors, fourth most for alpine and third most for Nordic. The Buffs had seven men's honors and four women's honors, the seven second to Utah and the fourth tied for fourth most.

INDIVIDUAL CHAMPIONSHIP NOTES:

Colorado becomes the first school in skiing to win 100 individual national championships, winning three this week with two from Boee and one from Gray. A total of 98 of the individual championships are in NCAA action with two coming in AIAW competition.
Boee's wins are the 71st and 72nd in CU history and Gray's title is the 28th women's title.
CU has won 42 titles in Nordic competition and 48 in alpine competition.
Boee's win is the 15th freestyle national championship and eighth in men's freestyle.
Boee became the 24th skier in CU history to win two individual NCAA Championships.
Boee is the 21st skier in CU history to win two or more titles at the same championships, and the 10th skier to win two individual races at the NCAA Championships. He is just the second in men's Nordic to do it, along with Mads Stroem in 2016.

CHAMPIONSHIP NOTES:

RMISA schools have now won 24 of the last 26 championships and only seven schools have claimed titles since the sport went coed in 1983. Utah now leads that total with 12 and has two in a row counting the 2019 championship (the 2020 event was cancelled at the midpoint and no team awards were recognized, although Utah was in the lead at that point). Behind Utah in coed titles is Denver (10), Colorado (8), Vermont (5), Dartmouth (1), New Mexico (1) and Wyoming (1).
Since the 1967 NCAA meet, Colorado has 27 first or second place finishes, including 17 wins. Utah (25; 13, 12), Vermont (22; 6, 16) and Denver (20; 14, 6) have dominated college skiing over those 54 seasons. Other three other schools, Wyoming (two wins, four seconds), Dartmouth (2, 2) and New Mexico (1, 2) have been able to crack the top two in that span.
The Buffaloes have won 20 national championships in skiing, 11 men's (1959-60-72-73-74-75-76-77-78-79-82), eight coed (1991-95-98-99-2006-11-13-15) and one women's (1982, AIAW). The 19 NCAA titles trails Denver by five, as the Pioneers (24) caught and passed CU by winning three straight to open the 21st Century and extend their lead with three more from 2008-10 and then titles in 2014, '16 and '18. After DU and CU (43 combined NCAA titles), Utah now has 13 with Vermont (6), Dartmouth (3), Wyoming (2) and New Mexico (one) rounding out the winners.

TEAM NOTES:

The Buffs scored 149 points on the final day of the championship, second to Utah's total of 156, to finish the meet with 522.5 points, 31.5 points behind Utah and 80.5 points ahead of third place Denver.
The RMISA finished with the top five spots and all seven schools finished in the top 10, with Westminer and Alaska Fairbanks finishing second and third among schools that only compete in alpine or Nordic, but not both.
The men's Nordic team scored the most points of any team at the championship with 173, three ahead of Utah's total of 170. The women's alpine team accomplished the same feat.
CU finished second in both the men's and women's point totals, by 31 on the men's side (286-255) but by just a half-point in women's action (268-267.5).
Scoring for the Buffs were Boee (40), Haugan (27) and Koch (18) on the men's side and Kaleta (25), Smith (20) and Dietze (19) on the women's side.
The men's team won its race with 85 points, 15 ahead of a three-way tie for second with Alaska Anchorage, Northern Michigan and Utah all scoring 70 points.
The women's team finished third with 64 points behind Utah (86) and Alaska Anchorage (76).

MEN'S INDIVIDUAL NOTES:

Magnus Boee won his second NCAA Championship and fourth race in a row. He had a stretch of five straight wins earlier in the season and in 12 races this season, he finished with 10 wins, one third and one fourth place.
- He is just the fourth skier in CU history to win 10 or more races in a season, joining Dave Butts (1960), Line Selnes (1998) and Maria Grevsgaard (2008).
- His 10 wins this season matches the total for men's skiers in CU history with Dave Butts, who in 1960 won three downhill races and two jumping competitions and was named skimeister three times while earning alpine combined and Nordic combined wins once apiece.
- His 10 wins this season sets a new record for men's Nordic skiers in CU history, surpassing Mads Stroem total of eighth in 2016. He also won five freestyle and five classic races, both the most in CU history, both breaking the previous mark of four, which were each accomplished twice. Stroem had four wins in each in 2016, at that time matching the freestyle record of Per Kare Jakobsen in 1989 and classic record of Ove Erik Tronvoll from 1999.
- He now has 13 career wins, seventh most in CU history and fifth among men's skiers and third-most among men's Nordic skiers. Only Rune Oedegaard (19, 2012-15), Stroem (14, 2014-17) are ahead of him. He now has six career wins in freestyle races, tied for third most with Jakobsen and just two behind the career record of Stroem (8, 2014-17) and one behind Oedegaard (7, 2014-17).
- Boee's 11 podium appearances this season ranks eighth most in CU history and is the eighth instance of a skier hitting the podium in every race or all but one race since skiing became specialized between alpine and Nordic skiers. He joins Eliska Hajkova (2011), Joanne Reid (2013), Oedegaard (2015) and Stroem (2016) hitting the podium in 11 of 12 races and only Jakobsen (1989), Selnes (1998), and Grevsgaard (2008) hit the podium in all 12 races. Lucie Zikova also had 12 podiums in 14 races in 2008 in alpine action.
- Boee finishes his sophomore season with 10 wins in 12 races with 11 podium appearances and 12 top five finishes. In 23 career races, he has 13 wins, 16 podiums, 19 top five and 22 top 10 performances.
Oyvind Haugan finished sixth to earn his second second-team All-America performance in the last three days. On the season, he raced 10 times, in the top 11 in each race with nine top 10, seven top five and one podium appearance.
Will Koch surged from 21st place in the middle of the race to finish 13th, catching eight skiers in the second half of the race. Koch finished in the top 13 in all 10 races this season with four top 10 finishes, including seventh in the classic race on Thursday to earn second-team All-America honors.

WOMEN'S INDIVIDUAL NOTES:

Weronika Kaleta finished seventh to earn second-team All-America honors. She surged as high as the top five in the middle of the race and finished in seventh, her eighth top 10 finish of the season and her second-best finish of the season behind a third place finish in the freestyle sprints. In races longer than 5K, her previous best finish was 10th two times. In 12 races, she finished 11, all in the top 16 with seven top 10 finishes including one top five and one podium appearance.
Ezra Smith finished 11th, missing out on All-America honors by about 15 seconds. She finished in the top 14 in all 12 races this season with six top 10 and one top five finish.
Anna-Maria Dietze finished 12th, like Smith about 15-20 seconds out of the top 10 and All-America honors. She has finished in the top 20 in all 12 races with seven top 20 and two top five finishes. Aside from her 20th place finish Thursday in the classic race when she lost a pole, she finished in the top 15 in the other 11 races this season.

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM STANDINGS (FINAL): 1. Utah 554; 2. Colorado 522.5; 3. Denver 442; 4. Alaska Anchorage 411; 5. Montana State, 385.5; 6. Vermont 351; 7. Northern Michigan 232; 8. Westminster, 212; 9. New Hampshire, 211; 10. Alaska Fairbanks, 163; 11. Plymouth State 134; 12. Boston College 121; 13. St. Lawrence, 100; 14. Michigan Tech 87; 15. St. Scholastica 33; 16. Colby 31. 17. Clarkson 0.

WOMEN'S 15K FREESTYLE (40 collegiate finishers)—1. Sydney Palmer-Leger, UU, 38:31.0; 2. Astrid Stav, UAA, 38:55.2; 3. Novie McCabe, UU, 39:16.1; 4. Tuva Bygrave, UAA, 39:28.7; 5. Mariel Pulles, UAF, 39:31.6; 6. Malin Boerjesjoe, NMU, 39:41.9; 7. Weronika Kaleta, CU, 39:44.5; 8. Kendall Kramer, UAF, 40:04.2; 9. Lina Sutro, UVM, 40:06.1; 10. Molly Miller, NMU, 40:14.5. Other CU Finishers: 11. Ezra Smith, 40:29.7; 12. Anna-Maria Dietze, 40:31.1.

MEN'S 20K FREESTYLE (38 collegiate finishers)—1. Magnus Boee, CU, 48:02.4; 2. Samuel Hendry, UU, 48:18.3; 3. Kjetil Baanerud, NMU, 48:49.4; 4. Zak Ketterson, NMU, 48:54.1; 5. Sigurd Roenning, UAA, 48:56.0; 6. Oyvind Haugan, CU, 48:56.8; 7. Magnus Noroey, UAA, 49:02.1; 8. Bernhard Flaschberger, DU, 49:11.3; 9. Borgar Norrud, DU, 49:27.4; 10. Bjorn Riksaasnen, UU, 49:30.2. Other CU Finisher: 13. Will Koch, 50:12.5.

QUOTABLE: Magnus Boee: "For 15 kilometers I was kind of skiing steady and kind of controlled, just making sure I had some extra fuel in the last lap. On the last lap I really pushed it a bit harder. I was getting splits that it was a pretty tight fight. I was kind of making sure I could really push it on the gradual uphills in the V2 technique. I think it paid off. I kind of was able to gap by 10 seconds on the last 5K which I'm pretty happy about. The conditions today were a little tricky and pretty slushy and loose which requires you to really ski relaxed and glide out. If you stress out you will just dig yourself into the snow and just go slower. You just have to kind of relax and that's why I'd say today's race was a lot less harder than Thursday's race. Thursday's race was a really hard battle where I was pushing all the way. Today was more of a technical one where I just tried to stay on top of the snow and float. That's kind of how I experienced the race today."

"One thing I've been super happy about this year is getting my freestyle going. Last year I had some fine races but no real good skating races, it was mostly on a classic course I was doing well. However, this year I've somehow figured it out technically I feel like. I'm able to ski a lot more relaxed and just ski faster with my freestyle. I've been very happy about that."

"It's amazing. I guess I kind of knew my potential somewhat and that I was capable of doing so (winning), but you know there's a difference between being capable of doing something and actually doing it. There's a lot that can go wrong and you always have to make sure everything goes right and it always feels great when you end up getting it all right and nothing was in your way. There's great satisfaction as well as a little bit of a relief. I just focused on enjoying the race and that I find always works if you're able to enjoy it. You just ski well and have less misfortune I feel like."

"Richie is like our history book with knowing everyone throughout the last 30 years. It's just amazing to have such a foundation that's coming with us all the time. The traditions and mentality of the CU ski team, I feel like there is a very strong bond in the ski team with both Alpine and Nordic. We hang out together and we are all super good friends. It's just a great environment and a great group to be with. With that social aspect I feel like Richie has definitely been great to encourage that social aspect in our team. It's not all about just racing and skiing but it's like a family, like he says, and I really appreciate that. I've just been enjoying so much my freshman and sophomore year while he's been here so I'm very thankful of that."

Jana Weinberger: "We kind of went into the day thinking, There's nothing to lose. We're just going to go and do our best.' We have not beaten Utah on Nordic side this season yet, but miracles can happen and we just went for it and did our best."

"I think the women did well. Some of them were more happy than the others, but it was a tough race out there. I think we had our chance. Julia didn't have a great race. I think today we were closest to the Utah team that we've been so far this season. I think overall I'm happy with the day."

"He's (Boee) a very talented athlete. He works very hard. He's very competitive. Throughout the whole season he kept reminding me, 'Hey I'm just three wins behind you now. Now I'm two wings behind you.' He finds his little milestones that he wants to pass and now he got his two championships."

Richard Rokos: "I was hoping for it. Utah has a women's team that has recruited so good for the next four years. They have girls one through three capable of doing every single race and it is scary. We'll have to do some extra work for the next couple of years. Otherwise, the rest of the team is in good shape. To beat those three or four Utah girls will be tough."

"Second place makes you always a little hungry. There is still room for improvement and goals for us to meet. I am excited that we got to that level and we still have a place to go. There is room for improvement and we can start with a new title, a new place to go and a new team. I think it is well set right now."

"Emotional is not the right word. I just went around because we won here in 1995. Fredrik Landstedt is the Director of Utah skiing and he was my assistant. He was a Nordic coach and we celebrated a national title right in the same place as the Nordic race. There are a lot of good memories. It is more of thinking back and saying, 'That was a hell of a time.' It is not over. I know I'll be around in some capacity helping or advising. We will see. I am not giving any limits to myself. I am done with university, but I still have a place to go to help them. I am excited about that part."

Boee Wins Program's 100th Individual Title As Buffs Take Second At NCAA Championships

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Magnus Boee

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Will Koch

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