Buffs Lead NCAA Championships At Midpoint

LAKE PLACID, N.Y.—On the strength of five All-America performances, the Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team maintained its lead at the 70th Annual NCAA Ski Championships after the freestyle races here Thursday at Mt. Van Hoevenberg with the championships reaching the midpoint.

Anna-Maria Dietze finished third and Hanna Abrahamsson fifth in the women's race as the Buffs kept pace with Utah, who's three skiers last season swept this race to open a commanding lead at the midpoint. Weronika Kaleta finished ninth in the women's race and Will Koch and Magnus Boee finished ninth and 10th in the men's race to all earn second-team All-America honors. Dietze and Abrahamsson earned first-team honors. Oyvind Haugan finished 19th for the men's team.

On paper, the scoring looked very similar to Wednesday, with the Buffs coming within a half point of doubling their first day score to maintain the lead. CU's alpine teams scored 139.5 points, and Thursday the Nordic teams scored 140 to sit with 279.5 at the midpoint of the championships. CU holds a 15.5-point lead over Utah (263), which outscored CU by eight points on the day, and the Buffs opened up a 49-point lead over Denver (230.5), who briefly took the lead after the men's race on Thursday.

Those three west teams are in control, as there is then a 77-point difference between the Pioneers and fourth place Dartmouth (153.5). Alaska Fairbanks, who only fields a Nordic team, is in fifth place with 150 points as the Seawolves scored the most points in the first day of Nordic competition.

The men's 10K freestyle race opened the day and the Buffs started a little earlier in the race than normal as none of the three CU skiers were in the top seed. Koch set the pace early and held the lead until that top seed came in later in the race and he finished ninth, just ahead of Boee. Koch picked up his third All-America honor, his first in freestyle, and Boee earned his fifth All-America honor.

The women's 5K race then took place and the CU women had a single goal, maintain contact with Utah's three Olympians that swept the first race of the 2022 NCAA Championships. The women did just that with Dietze's third, Abrahamsson's fifth and Kaleta's ninth compared to the Utes win (Novie McCabe), fourth (Sophia Laukli) and 14th (Sydney Palmer-Leger). In the end, Utah edged the Buffs 88-85 but it was not enough to take the overall lead.

Abrahamsson picked up her third All-America honor in her third NCAA Championship race, Dietze picked up her first All-America honor and Kaleta her third All-America honor.

WHAT IT MEANS
The Buffs are at the midpoint of the NCAA Championships in the lead. If you asked anybody outside the program if they thought that was possible coming in, they surely would have said no chance. And yet here we are, but it's only halftime. The second half is always the most important part, and that's especially the case at the NCAA Championships where the ever-unstable slalom races remain for the alpine teams and the 20K distance races remain for the Nordic teams.

UP NEXT
Action returns to alpine on Friday with the slalom races at Whiteface Mountain. The men run first on Friday with the first run set for 7 a.m. MT (9 a.m. local) with the women's first run an hour later at 8 a.m. (10 a.m. local). Second runs are then 10 a.m. MT (Noon) for the men and 11 a.m. (1 p.m.) for the women.

TEAM NOTES

The Buffs continue to lead at the NCAA Championships. This is the first time CU has led at the midpoint since 2018, and the first time CU has had the lead through each of the first two days since the 1982 men's championship here at Lake Placid. The 2011 NCAA Championships first alpine day was pushed up a day due to weather and the Buffs lead at the end of every day of competition but would not have been in the lead if only the Nordic races were completed on the first day.
Dietze (34), Abrahamsson (29) and Kaleta (22) combined to score 85 points on the women's side and Koch (22), Boee (21) and Haugan (12) scored 55 in the men's race.
Since 1991, this is the fifth time the Buffs have led at the midpoint, also having the lead in 1991, '98, 2000, '11 and '18. CU won titles in three of those seasons, 1991, '98 and 2011.

ALL-AMERICA NOTES

Five Buffs picked up All-America honors, Dietze and Abrahamsson first team honors and Kaleta, Koch and Boee second team nods.
CU leads the championship with eight honors through two days, just ahead of Utah (7) with Denver (5) having the third-most.
Abrahamsson picked up her third career honor (in three races) and second first-team honor.
Dietze picked up her first All-America honor.
Boee picked up his fifth All-America honor.
Kaleta and Koch both picked up their third All-America honor.
CU now has 542 All-America honors from 209 different skiers. The Buffs have 307 men's honors from 121 skiers and 235 women's honors from 88 skiers.
CU now has 313 first-team honors from 154 different skiers, including 136 women's first-team honors from 65 skiers to go along with 177 men's first-team honors from 88 skiers.
CU now has 58 women's freestyle All-America honors and 55 men's freestyle honors, for a total of 113 overall honors in freestyle races.

MEN'S NORDIC NOTES

Koch took ninth, his seventh top 10 finish in eight races this season and 18th career top 10 finish in 27 career races.
Boee finished 10th, his 40th career top 10 finish and seventh of the season in 11 races.
Haugan finished 19th, picking up his eighth top 20 in 10 races this season and 22nd career top 20 in 25 career races finished.

WOMEN'S NORDIC NOTES

Dietze continued her fantastic season that has seen her finish in the top six in every race she's taken part in. She now has 41 career races and finished in the top 20 40 times with 25 top 10, 15 top five and five podium appearances. This season she has finished every race in the top six with eight top five finishes and four podium appearances, all in freestyle races.
Abrahamsson has finished each of her 21 career races in the top seven with her fifth-place finish, and she has finished 17 of those 21 in the top five. This season she has eight top five finishes in 10 races.
Kaleta has finished in the top nine in each of her five finished races this season. In her career, she has 16 top 10 finishes in 22 career finished races.

QUOTES

Jana Weinberger
"Overall, it was a good day. The women's team did great, three in the top 10. That's always our goal. The men's team fell a little short of that, but not a bad day."

On The Men's Seeds: "The seeds don't really matter that much. It doesn't have big effect. You know, you just go out there and race and go as fast as you can."

On Entering The Day With A Lead: "Yes, definitely. It was nice to be in the lead after first day and we're still in the lead halfway through so we're excited to see what happens in the next two days. Slalom is always interesting. Always never racking. So we'll get through tomorrow and will be good."

Anna-Maria Dietze
"I had a good race out there today, came in third place. We had two others in the top 10 for the women, so an awesome day."

On Staying Close To Utah: "We're happy because we've been way closer this year, but its good to be right with them during this race, and it was super close and just a couple of seconds between places. We're happy we're here and the hard work we put in this fall paid off."

On The Alpine Performance: "That was super motivating. We were all watching and all so excited. That really pushes you a bit more and you really want to fight out there for every single point, you just want to contribute."

Hanna Abrahamsson
"This isn't my favorite event to be honest, it's a little bit too short and also at sea level so my expectations weren't too high. Based on that, I'm pretty happy to be honest with my results. I have honestly not seen as a result list yet, but I think I was pretty close to the podium, like two seconds or something from third. So that was honestly better than I thought."

On Holding Serve: "That's awesome. I don't really know what to say. It's super fun that we're doing great like on a team level and my favorite event is on Saturday. So, I will do my best to collect some good points then. I think I did my part today because I was probably not going to be able to do better than this."

On Watching The Alpine Team: "My nerves -- they were not feeling great watching them yesterday. I don't know it's just painful watching alpine to be honest, because it's too much that can happen. But yeah, of course I'm super proud of them and super impressed."

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM RESULTS (Thru 4 of 8 races)—1. Colorado 279.5; 2. Utah 263; 3. Denver 230.5; 4. Dartmouth 153.5; 5. Alaska Fairbanks 150; 6. Montana State 138; 7. New Hampshire 122; 8. Vermont 121; 9. Middlebury 103; 10. Westminster 97; 11. St. Michael's 95; 12. Michigan Tech 60; 13. Plymouth State 50; 14. Alaska Anchorage 38; 15. Colby 31; 16. Harvard 27; 17. St. Lawrence 19; 18. Northern Michigan 8.5; 19. Nevada 8; 20. Bowdoin, St. Scholastica, Williams 0.

MEN'S 10K FREESTYLE (40 collegiate finishers)— 1. Joe Davies, UAF, 22:33.2; 2. John Hagenbuch, DAR, 22:58.2; 3. Bernhard Flaschberger, DU, 23:03.5; 4. Andreas Kirkeng, DU, 23:20.7; 5. Mike Ophoff, UAF, 23:39.0; 6. Luke Jager, UU, 23:39.1; 7. Remi Drolet, HAR, 23:39.4; 8. Walker Hall, UU, 23:51.3; 9. Will Koch, CU, 23:55.9; 10. Magnus Boee, CU, 23:56.5. Other CU Finisher: 19. Oyvind Haugan, 24:23.5.

WOMEN'S 5K FREESTYLE (39 collegiate finishers)— 1. Novie McCabe, UU, 12:46.3; 2. Jasmine Lyons, UNH, 12:59.2; 3. Anna-Maria Dietze, CU, 13:01.6; 4. Sophia Laukli, UU, 13:02.6; 5. Hanna Abrahamsson, CU, 13:03.3; 6. Mariel Pulles, UAF, 13:08.2; 7. Kendall Kramer, UAF, 13:17.8; 8. Anabel Needham, MTU, 13:23.3; 9. Weronika Kaleta, CU, 13:24.6; 10. Ava Thurston, DAR, 13:25.5.

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Players Mentioned

Hanna Abrahamsson

Magnus Boee

Anna-Maria Dietze

Oyvind Haugan

Weronika Kaleta

Will Koch