Skiing Ready to Go for 14th National Championship this Week in New Hampshire

Wednesday, March 10

Francona, NH

All Day

University of Utah

Giant Slalom

Photo by: Kory Mortensen

Skiing Ready to Go for 14th National Championship this Week in New Hampshire

3/9/2021 1:58 PM | Skiing

Utes Have Won Every Meet this Season

SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah ski team heads to New Hampshire this week looking to win its 14^th national championship in program history this Wednesday through Saturday.

The NCAA Championship this year is held in New Hampshire with the alpine teams racing in Francona, New Hampshire and the Nordic teams racing in Jackson, New Hampshire from March 10-13.

Utah skiing has had a great season so far being named the RMISA Regular Season Champion and then following that up with a strong performance at the RMISA Championship win.

"We're feeling good," Director of Skiing Fredrik Landstedt said. "The championship is always different because you have a smaller team and everyone counts. Usually it becomes a little tighter with the teams. Somebody could have a really good day and put up a lot of points, so you have to pretty much as a team be ready to go and perform every single day."

Utah was able to pick 12 skiers total with three each from men's alpine, women's alpine, men's Nordic and women's Nordic teams.

For Utah, this was very tough, because every student-athlete on the team has had good enough results to race at the NCAA Championship.

"It was very tough picking our team this year," Landstedt said. "Especially on the women's Nordic side when we had five skiers in the top six. It's tough for the ones that are left at home, but everyone is a huge part of the success of the team no matter who goes and skies at NCAAs. Everybody on the team has been pushing each other and training really hard. They're all part of it."

Below are Utah's selections for competing in the NCAA Championship this year:

Men's Alpine
Gustav Vøllo
Wilhelm Normannseth
Joachim Lien

Women's Alpine
Katie Vesterstein
Katie Parker
Sona Moravcikova

Men's Nordic
Samuel Hendry
Luke Jager
Bjørn Riksaasen

Women's Nordic
Novie McCabe
Sydney Palmer-Leger
Julia Richter

This group of 12 for Utah has totaled 13 wins this season heading into the NCAA Championship and have helped lead an absolutely dominant regular season that has seen Utah go undefeated this year.

Utah did that by racking up 2,837 points through four meets, for a blistering average of 709.3 points per meet. Utah also swept all four meet championships. In order of completion, the Utes won the Denver Invitational with 683 points, winning by a margin of 75 points over Colorado. Then in the Colorado Invitational, the Utes won by 79.5 points with a total of 708.5 points. The RMISA Invitational at Utah finished next with the Utes compiling 683.5 points and winning by 150.5 points over Montana State.

The Utes' 2,837 points are the most in a regular season under the current scoring format, surpassing Denver's total of 2,608.5 in 2014, the first year of the current format. Utah scored 2,185 points in three meets last season, for an average of 728.3 per meet, and the Utes average this season of 709.3 is second to that mark.

Utah won the 2019 NCAA Championship and was well on their way to defending the championship last season, but it was canceled after the second day of competition due to Covid-19.

The schedule for the 2021 championship starts with men's and women's giant slalom races on Wednesday followed by the Nordic races getting underway Thursday with the 5K women's and 10K men's classic races. The slalom races will take place on Friday and then the championship's final races will be the 15K women's and 20K men's freestyle races. Both Nordic races will be interval starts due to the pandemic.

For full coverage of the week, check UtahUtes.com as well as @UtahSkiTeam on Twitter and Instagram.