This weekend we did qualifying races for USCSA. This means that we raced against Air Force and Colorado Mountain College. We did 2 races: 15km Freestyle race in Breckenridge, CO and 1.9km Classic Sprint race in Leadville, CO.
Both races went extremely well with UW winning the team title for both men and women in both races.
Saturday’s race was held at Gold Run Nordic Center in Breckenridge, CO. In the 15km race on Saturday the men did well with Jacob Peterson skiing away from the field with a time of 50:00. He was followed by team mates Justin Kinner , 2nd 50:37 and John Kirlin, 3rd 50:57. The other UW men in the race were Michael Fitzgerald (5th), Nicholai Smith (6th), Brian Sebade (8th), Patrick Richards(9th) and Adam Kargas (10th) (you can find the full results online at: http://www.uwyo.edu/ski/results_2008/Gold_Run.htm
The women dominated taking the top 6 places in the race with Gwynn Barrows continuing her team dominance winning by over a minute in 1:00:25. Freshman Marie Cartwright was 2nd in 1:01:37 followed by Liz Turner, Karen Liebsch, Erin Hammer and Katie Turner.
Sundays race was a 1.9km classic sprint race and was held at Tennessee Pass Nordic Center, outside of Leadville, Co. The elevation there is over 11,000ft and was a challenge for some of the athletes but UW still managed to come out on top. The format for the race is one round of interval starts. After the results from this are posted the athletes are divided up into heats of 4-6 based upon their time. After the first round 5 of the top 6 men were from UW. The final round was dominated by Joe Howdyshell in a time that was 17 seconds ahead of second place. Joe is a UW graduate student in Kinesiology who trains and races with the UW Nordic team but has used his college eligibility. Jacob Peterson was a strong second with Nicholai Smith losing 3rd by 4 inches to Joe Dougherty from Air Force. Justin Kinner and Michael Fitzgerald completed the top heat of men, giving UW 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th and placing the team 5 points ahead of Air Force on the day. Results at: http://www.uwyo.edu/ski/results_2008/Leadville_Sprint.htm
The women’s race was also exciting with Gwynn Barrows just holding off a huge finish by the Turner twins. Gwynn finished 2 seconds in front of Katie Turner who beat her sister Liz in a photo finish. Freshman Marie Cartwright rounded out the UW representation in 4th, just ahead of two Air Force women. The UW women dominated their Air Force rivals 27 to 13.
It was a good weekend and great fun for our athletes to get a short break from NCAA Division I competition. It’s a wonderful and unique opportunity for our athletes to have the opportunity for Division I competition and race against the best skiers in the nation and then get to step back and race Division II where they compete extremely well. The best of all possible worlds!
This weekend UW Nordic will be back in action with the big dogs at the Western State College invitational in Crested Butte, Co on February 1 & 2. We’ve never raced there and we’re excited for the challenge of a new course. Friday will be an interval start classic race and Sunday a mass start freestyle race. Our athletes are getting stronger every week and we’re hoping for some huge improvements in % points this weekend.
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