Menu
What's new
By:
Filters
AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!

Championships Thread- Skiing at the 2021 NCAA Championships (Last Rokos led Buff team; Francona and Jackson, New Hampshire; Wed. 3/10-Sat. 3/13)

AztecBuff

AztecBuff

Club Member
Club Member
Moderator
I'll be putting more info in this thread as the Championships close in, but wanted to start it now as it was announced today that the Buffs were selected to bring a full team (12 skiers) to the Championships.

Go Buffs!!!

Article -


Direct link - https://cubuffs.com/news/2021/3/2/skiing-buffs-to-send-full-contingent-to-ncaa-championships.aspx

"
INDIANAPOLIS – The Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team has qualified a full 12-skier contingent for the 68th Annual NCAA Ski Championships, set for March 10-13 in New Hampshire, the association announced Tuesday.

Skiing for the Buffs in search of their 21st National Championship (20th NCAA) will be Magnus Boee (men's Nordic), Anna-Maria Dietze (women's Nordic), Louis Fausa (men's alpine), Stef Fleckenstein (women's alpine), Filip Forejtek (men's alpine), Cassidy Gray (women's alpine), Emma Hammergaard (women's alpine), Oyvind Haugan (men's Nordic), Weronika Kaleta (women's Nordic), Will Koch (men's Nordic), Ezra Smith (women's Nordic) and Joey Young (men's alpine).

The 12 Buffs representing CU will be on the youthful side with one senior, three juniors, three sophomore and five freshmen. Six Buffs; Fausa, Gray, Haugan, Kaleta, Koch and Smith, will be making their first appearance at the NCAA Championships. Boee, Dietze and Hammergaard will be making their second appearance while Fleckenstein, Forejtek and Young will be making their third appearance. This group of skiers has compiled 67 top 10 finishes this season with 19 podium appearances and 10 race victories. In their careers, those numbers jump to 138 top 10 finishes with 41 podium appearances and 16 race wins. Nine of the 12 skiers have hit the podium in their careers and five have won at least one race in their careers.
...
"
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Since I always forget the scoring system in skiing, I have posted the below in various prior years' threads. (I'm assuming/ hoping there's no change this year.) -

"Scoring in NCAA Skiing- the top 30 finishers of each race earn points. The scores earned for the top 8 finishers from 1st through 8th are 40 (for 1st place)-37-34-31-29-27-25-23. After that, the 9th through 30th places earn one point less for each lower place finish, so for example 9th place earns 22 points, 10th place 21 points, etc., all the way down to the 30th place finisher, who earns 1 point."
(Note-at the NCAA championships, teams can only bring 3 athletes of each gender for each type of skiing (Alpine and Nordic), so all their finishes count. For earlier season races with more than 3 racers per team competing in each event, only the top 3 finishers for each team get their finishes counted when calculating their (and other) team's score.)"

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Various Championship info and links:

Host (Univ. of New Hampshire (UNH)) Championships' home page - https://unhwildcats.com/sports/2021/3/1/ncaa-skiing-championship-central.aspx
(Per that, no spectators are being allowed to view any of the races.)

Full schedule (Times are eastern; I added mountain time in parentheses. As always with skiing, weather is huge and variable, and can lead to time and date changes) :

"

Wednesday, March 10 - Mittersill - Cannon Mountain​

9:30 a.m. (7:30 AM MT) 9:00 a.m. (7:00 AM MT) Women’s Giant Slalom: First Run. ​

10:45 a.m. (8:45 AM MT) 10:00 a.m. (8:00 AM MT) Men’s Giant Slalom: First Run. ​

12:45 p.m. (10:45 AM MT) 12:15 p.m. (10:15 AM MT) Women’s Giant Slalom: Second Run. ​

2 p.m. (Noon MT) 1:30 p.m. (11:30 AM MT) Men’s Giant Slalom: Second Run. ​

(Awards Ceremony Immediately Following)​

Thursday, March 11 - Jackson Nordic Center​

10 a.m. (8:00 AM MT) Men’s 10k Classical; Individual start. ​

Noon (10:00 AM MT) Women’s 5k Classical; Individual start. ​

(Awards Ceremony Immediately Following)​

Friday, March 12 - Mittersill - Cannon Mountain​

9:00 a.m. (7:00 AM MT) Men’s Slalom. First run. (Cannon Mountain)​

10:00 a.m. (8:00 AM MT) Women’s Slalom. First run. (Cannon Mountain)​

12:00 p.m. (10:00 AM MT) Men’s Slalom. Second run. (Cannon Mountain)​

1:00 p.m. (11:00 AM MT) Women’s Slalom. Second run. (Cannon Mountain)​

(Awards Ceremony Immediately Following)​

Saturday, March 13 - Jackson Nordic Center​

10 a.m. (8:00 AM MT) Women’s 15k Freestyle. Individual start. (Jackson Nordic Center)​

Noon (10:00 AM MT) Men’s 20k Freestyle: Individual start. (Jackson Nordic Center)​

2 p.m. (Noon MT) Team Awards Ceremony (Jackson Nordic Center)​

"​

NCAA's Championships homepage - https://www.ncaa.com/live-updates/s...hampionship-participants-schedule-and-results

Link to link to free NCAA live video coverage for Day 1 - https://www.ncaa.com/liveschedule/2021/03/10
(Assume links to later days' races will be accessible by just changing the date listed in the above link.)

Live timings and scores (Per New Hampshire's homepage) -
Alpine races (Scheduled for Wednesday and Friday) - https://vola.ussalivetiming.com/ or https://vola.ussalivetiming.com/#

Nordic (AKA Cross Country) races (Scheduled for Thursday and Saturday) - http://summittiming.net/races/race_results_for_ncaa_champs_2020.php
(Currently lists links to last year's races, but assume current year's links will be added by race time Thursday.)
Men's 10K Classic - http://www.rmisaskiing.com/liven.php?r=1779
Women's 5K Classic - http://www.rmisaskiing.com/liven.php?r=1778

Team Scores - http://www.rmisaskiing.com/meet-live.php
 
Last edited:
Preview in front of the Championships beginning tomorrow (1st run scheduled for 7:30 AM MT), the last for the Buffs led by legendary Coach Rokos. (I'm adding a more detailed schedule, as well as links to things like live video and timings, to the bottom portion of the original post, .)



"
FRANCONIA & JACKSON, N.H. – The Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team has ventured east about 2,000 miles to New Hampshire, where 12 student-athletes will attempt to bring home the program's 21st National Championship this Wednesday through Saturday at the 68th Annual NCAA Ski Championships.

The 2021 NCAA Championships will mark the end of an era, not just for the Colorado Ski Team but for NCAA Skiing in general, with the impending retirement of CU coach Richard Rokos, who will be leading the Buffaloes on the slopes for the final time attempting to accomplish the same thing his first team back in 1991 did by winning an NCAA Championship.

The schedule for the 2021 championship begins with men's and women's giant slalom races on Wednesday with Nordic getting underway Thursday with 5K women's and 10K men's classic races. The great equalizer, as Rokos puts it, will take place Friday with men's and women's slalom races and the championship will close out on Saturday with the 15K women's and 20K men's freestyle races. Both Nordic races will be interval start races due to the pandemic.

At first glance, Utah looks to be nearly unbeatable, but if all of 2020 and the first few months of 2021 teach us anything, it's that anything can happen. The Utes will be a formidable opponent in 2021 but one key factor about the NCAA Championships puts many teams on a level playing field, you can only bring 12 skiers to compete, three in each gender and discipline (men's and women's alpine and Nordic). That fact also hurts the Buffs, who are leaving behind several skiers who could compete for All-America status, but it likely hurts the Utes more, who are leaving home a few first-team All-RMISA performers due to the rules.
...

Stakes are always higher at the NCAA Championships, not only because it's the NCAA Championships but because every result counts, unlike any race all season long. Given that fact, it's anybody's game.

This season more than any other there are more teams that could make a run at the championship. With fewer schools in the east competing, that unfortunately leaves traditional powerhouses Dartmouth and Middlebury out of the mix this season, but that also means more schools will be fielding a full 12-skier team like the Buffs.

In the west, aside from Utah and the Buffs, which finished 1-2 in four of the five meets this season, Montana State has also had a solid season, as has Alaska Anchorage. Denver has had a bit of a down year, but the Pioneers always bring everything they have and usually compete for a title at the NCAA Championships. In the east, host New Hampshire will field a full team for the first time in a while and will be skiing on its home courses, which has to be an advantage. Perennial power Vermont is also full steam ahead will a full 12-skier team and was dominant at times in the eastern region this season.

Several other teams will be at full strength in one of the two disciplines, which means they won't compete for the overall title but their performances will certainly come into play with which teams eventually wins the title. Those teams are Boston College (alpine), MIchigan Tech (Nordic), Northern Michigan (Nordic), Plymouth State (alpine) and Westminster (alpine). Specifically watch out for Northern Michigan and Westminster. The Wildcats have finished in the top 10 several times and among the Nordic leaders in recent memory and Westminster, skiing at the NCAA Championships for just the second time, scored the most alpine points in the RMISA throughout the season.
"
 
Last edited:
Less than 10 minutes from the scheduled start to the Championships!

And, it looks like they may have started early based on the below tweet vs. what I'd found for the original schedule. And, the video has now started, so looks like the

Direct links I see:

Live video coverage of today's giant slaloms - https://www.ncaa.com/event/3979

Live timing (results) -
Women's (2 runs scheduled to start at 7:30 7:00 AM and, possibly, 10:45 AM MT.) - https://vola.ussalivetiming.com/rac...untain-ncaa-championships---alpine_15732.html
(The link is already showing a few times, but I'm GUESSING they may just be testing their system.)

Men's (2 runs scheduled to start at 8:45 8:10 AM and, possibly, noon MT.) - https://vola.ussalivetiming.com/rac...untain-ncaa-championships---alpine_15733.html

 
Neither the timing link I provided or in the Buff skiing tweet seems to be working well right now.
 
No points awarded until after the 2nd run, of course, but nice 1st runs by the Buff women, as they all "beat" their bib numbers, and sit in 1st, 3rd and 16th.

Men's race set to start at the top of the hour.

Note- having now seen both, definitely recommend folks use the timing link the Buff tweet recommended, as it includes live team results as skiers head on down the slopes. Again, those are-
Women's - http://www.rmisaskiing.com/livea.php?r=1776
Men's - http://www.rmisaskiing.com/livea.php?r=1777
(The one advantage to the links I originally provided is they provide interval times.)

 
Last edited:
Per the live stream, the 2nd run of the women's slalom was moved back a bit, and is supposed to start in a couple minutes.
 
Buffs unofficially with a GREAT start to the Championships, as they're showing finishing the 1st event, women's giant slalom, with 1st, 2nd and 14th individual finishes, which gives them the team win with 94 points!!!
(Of course, this early nothing is close to equating to overall victory, but a good "1st chapter" start to this "8 chapter novel" of a team Championship.)

Special congrats to frosh Gray and junior Fleckenstein for the 1-2 finish!!!

With their depth to dominance so far this season in every discipline, they're still definitely in it (and still may be the favorite given how crazy each race can be and the strength of all their skiers), but a tough start for the conference #1 and I assume Championship favorite Utes, as 2 of their skiers didn't finish their 2nd runs, so they only earned 23 points.

The top other competitors to the overall championships were Vermont, finishing 3rd with 59 points, and Montana State in 4th with 59 points. (Westminster College finished 2nd behind the Buffs, but don't field a Nordic team so aren't in the running for the overall team championships.) Host New Hampshire, who looks to be very close to Vermont overall this season, sit in 8th with 32 points. (Vermont looks to be the stronger Alpine school, while New Hampshire's been stronger on the Nordic side.)
 
Last edited:
I can't think of any sport that can be more impacted by weather than skiing, and it might be a factor for the Buffs here, although I hope not.

For some reason, a significant delay has occurred in the 2nd run of the men's GS, right before 2 Buffs (13th place (after the 1st run) Young and 11th place Fausa) were set to start. Hopefully they'll be fine, and if the officials use the time to repair and clean the course, it may be an advantage.

I may have missed it, but I didn't hear from the announcer WHY the delay is happening. If I had to GUESS, when they had the mike open a few minutes ago (its off now), it sounded like it might be pretty windy.
 
And right after I posted the above, the race restarted, and Young unfortunately skied off, so no points for him.

(I would have thought the announcer would have said if wind was the cause of the delay, but he didn't. My next guess is maybe there were issues with the timing system?)
 
The hill giveth, and the hill taketh away.

After a great women's GS, the men unofficially have a tough race, as they only earn 24 points, all from Filip Forejtek's 7th place finish. (2 starts after Young skied out, Buff Fausa had the slowest 2nd run of any of the finishers, and didn't earn any points as he finished 31st.)

Looks like the break I noted in an above post may have hurt the Buffs a lot.

Just eyeballing scores, I'd guess Montana State might be in the lead after day one, while Utah, which won the men's race with 85 points, erased a large % of the big deficit they had vs. the Buffs after the women's race, although if I'm eye balling it right, the Buffs may still be up 15 (turned out to be 11) points or so over them.
 
Last edited:
They've now started the individual awards' ceremony for today's races, including the Buff women's 1st and 2nd place finishers, as well as the men's 7th place finisher. (They acknowledge the top 8 finishers of each race.)
 
I hope the cubuffs article after today's races will address this afternoon's delay in the men's race, why it happened, etc.. Also, be interesting to hear what the conditions were right after the delay (more wind, etc.?), and whether the skiers or coaches think that influenced the times.

In addition to Fausa running the slowest 2nd run, the next slowest was by a Vermont skier right after him. With them 10th and 11th after the 1st run, you wouldn't think they'd run such slow times (over 3 seconds slower than ANY other skier in the 2nd run).

Not having seen either run, I'd guess, unless the wind just got CRAZY for the 1st few skiers after the delay, both the Buff and Vermont skiers must have had BIG errors in their runs to lose that much time. (Note- the 2 skiers right after the Vermont racer, who were in a tie for 8th after the 1st run, did have solid second runs (7th and 12th fastest).)
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Edit- re tomorrow's races, wanted to mention I'd GUESS that whoever decides on and applies the wax for the Nordic teams will be extra KEY tomorrow, as the announcer today said highs are forecasted to be, if I remember correctly, in the mid-50's tomorrow at the race course. (I can't remember for sure, but I'd assume none of the western region schools have had many if any races in spring-like conditions so far this season.)
 
Last edited:
Article after today's racing.
(As might be expected, both of my guesses on why the men's 2nd run was delayed right before a couple Buffs were scheduled to go down the hill, wind and timing issues, were wrong. The "winning" (real) reason (I would think somewhat embarrassing for a ski resort) - issues with the ski lift.)



Direct link - https://cubuffs.com/news/2021/3/10/skiing-gray-wins-ncaa-championship-buffs-in-third.aspx

"
FRANCONIA, N.H. – Freshman Cassidy Gray won the Individual NCAA Championship and junior Stef Fleckenstein was second in the women's giant slalom race, propelling the Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team into third place after the first day of the NCAA Championships here at Mittersill-Cannon Mountain Ski Resort Wednesday.

On the strength of Gray and Fleckenstein, the Buffs won the women's GS race as a team with 94 points, 15 ahead of second place Westminster and 35 ahead of third place Vermont. The men's team had a series of unfortunate events that lead to junior Filip Forejtek being the only team scorer. His seventh place finish gave the Buffs 25 points in that race for a total of 119. Montana State and Westminster, both out of the RMISA, are tied for the lead with 137 points, 18 ahead of the Buffs, while Utah is 11 points behind the Buffs with 108 points and Denver rounds out an all-RMISA top five with 97 points.

Gray became the Buffs 98th Individual National Champion (96th NCAA) in program history and the first in women's alpine since CU Hall of Famer Lucie Zikova swept both races at the 2008 NCAA Championships. Fleckenstein's second place finish gave the Buffs their first 1-2 finish at the NCAA Championships since 2013 when Joanne Reid and Eliska Hajkova finished 1-2 in the women's freestyle at Middlebury enabling the Buffs to pull off the largest final day comeback in NCAA history.

Gray's performance was particularly impressive given the fact she started the race 26th out of a possible 33 racers. Even though she had a GS win earlier in the season at Park City, she didn't have a good NCAA seed because it was the only GS race she finished this season. Despite starting near the back of the field, she had the third-fastest first run and then her second run was over a second faster than every other skier in the field to get the win. Fleckenstein started sixth and had the lead after the first run and her second-place time was nearly a second ahead of third place Francesca English from Vermont. Sophomore Emma Hammergaard had a solid race, finishing 14th and moving up six spots from her starting position of 22nd.
...

UP NEXT: The Nordic teams now take center stage Thursday with the 5K women's and 10K men's classic races at Jackson Nordic Center in Jackson, N.H. The men's race will start at 8 a.m. MT followed by the women's race at 10 a.m. MT. Friday it will be back to the alpine teams with slalom races and Saturday the championships will conclude with Nordic freestyle races.
...

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM STANDINGS (Through 2 of 8 Races): 1. Montana State & Westminster, 137; 3. Colorado 119; 4. Utah 108; 5. Denver 97; 6. Vermont 94; 7. New Hampshire & Plymouth State 77; 9. Alaska Anchorage 63; 10. Boston College 54; 11. St. Lawrence 32.
"
 
Per the live timings, the Buffs' bib #, and their start times (converted to MT) for this 1st interval start race are:
12 Will Koch CU 8:06:00 AM
28 Oyvind Haugan CU 8:14:00 AM
32 Magnus Boee CU 8:16:00 AM
 
Last edited:
Unofficially, looks like a 2nd Buff individual champion of this Championships in Magnus Boee!!!

Overall, a very nice race as both the other Buffs finish in the top 8 (7th and 8th). (As I've noted previously, the Buffs' men's Nordic future looks STRONG the next few years, as Boee is a sophomore and the other 2 Buffs competing today are freshmen.)

Even with those good to great Buff results, the Utes win the team race 100 points with 2nd, 3rd and 5th place finishes, while the Buffs finished 2nd with 88 points. (If the season results play out here, scarily, the Ute WOMEN's team has generally been the more dominant one. Hope they don't get too much of a gap after their race scheduled to start at 10:00 MT.)
 
Last edited:
Per the live timings, the Buffs' bib #'s (looks like they're starting very close together) and start times (converted to MT) for the women's interval start race scheduled to start very soon are:
119 Weronika Kaleta CU 10:09:30 AM
120 Anna-Maria Dietze CU 10:10:00 AM
122 Ezra Smith CU 10:11:00 AM
 
The Buff Nordic women all finish middle of the filed, unofficially finishing in 13th, 14th and 20th. In the team battle, they're showing in 4th for the race with 45.5 points. Doesn't look it was a great race for them, as they had quite a few points more than Alaska-Anchorage during the conference season in this discipline, but UAA got 2nd today overall with 72 points.

In line with the rest of the season, the Ute women dominate and get maximum points with a 1, 2, 3 finish, good for 111 points.

Edit- Team standings for the 6 schools competing in both Nordic and Alpine events-
NCAA Ski Championships_2021_team scores after day 2.png
 
The Alpine men have already completed their 1st runs in the slalom competition. Women scheduled to start momentarily.

Based on the Buff finishes noted in the below tweet, the men are in a narrow lead (with 69 points) after their 1st run.



 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top