Skiing Falls to 12th in NCAA Championships Races in Utah

The Middlebury ski teams took part in the 2014 NCAA Championships held at the University of Utah March 5-8. Alpine events were held at the Park City Mountain Resort while the nordic events were held at the Soldier Hollow Resort.

The conditions out in Utah were unique, but Heather Mooney ’15 believed the host did a great job.

“We arrived in Utah to green grass on the golf course outside our condo,” Mooney said. “The venue has done an amazing job making and conserving snow all year, and had a 3ft deep, 14ft wide ribbon of snow along the 5k course, with bare ground everywhere else. The conditions held up quite well considering, freezing overnight for really fast skiing early morning.”

The men’s alpine representatives were Hig Roberts ’14, Christopher McKenna ’17, and Nick Bailey ’14. Yina Moe-Lange ’15 was the lone representative for the women’s alpine team. As for the nordic events, Ben Lustgarten ’14 was the lone qualifier for the men’s team; however, his injury took him out of NCAA competition. Mooney and Stella Holt ’15 took part in the women’s nordic competition.

Wednesday, March 5 marked the first day of competition on the slopes. The giant slalom started off the competition and Middlebury had a good showing. Roberts placed 15th, McKenna came in at 17th, and Bailey rounded out the Middlebury alpine men with a 22nd place finish. Moe-Lange represented Middlebury tremendously well as she came within two places of All-American status. Her 12th place run was impressive as she finished off her season in a time of 2:00.52. After day one, Middlebury sat in seventh place with 58 points.

Day two kicked off the nordic events and Middlebury came away with two solid runs. Mooney earned a 22nd place finish while teammate Holt was close behind, finishing 28th.

The slalom event and 15K freestyle took place to close out the competition. Roberts once again finished as Middlebury’s top performer, closing out a great college career with a 13th-place finish. McKenna was 20th and Bailey was 23rd. Moe-Lange finished her junior year at Middlebury with a 19th place run. The 15K freestyle event ended with Mooney and Holt finishing only six seconds apart. Holt’s 27th place finish edged out Mooney’s 29th place run.

While celebrating her individual success, Moe-Lange acknowledged that the team felt disappointed about how the weekend turned out.
“Individually, I felt like I did well and I’m pretty stoked on my performance this week,” Moe-Lange said. “As a team we struggled a little bit. It is always hard to compete with the bigger teams, especially when we lost Ben Lustgarten to injury, but overall we all worked extremely hard.”

To conclude the NCAA ski season, Middlebury finished in 12th place overall.

Mooney is already looking forward to next year.

“The biggest thing I’ll take out of this year is confidence in my racing and ability to ski consistently through the season,” Mooney said. “I can see the gaps between me and the top skiers, and know what I need to do to be there by next season. That said, knowing I can perform consistently, I have confidence that if I train really well this spring, summer and fall, I’ll be able to be there consistently. Being at NCAAs this year was really fun to race, but also a good motivation to get to work for next year. Training for next season starts now, so I’m excited to see what I can do. Especially on the girls’ side, we have a really strong team going into next year, so it will be really fun to all push each other to the next level.”