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Reid Wins Freestyle Title,

In Friday’s slalom, the University of Colorado ski team played it conservative, knowing its strong suit lay ahead in Saturday’s Nordic freestyle races.  And with a first place and two runner-up efforts, the Buffaloes rallied to comeback from a 54-point deficit to win its 19th national championship in skiing, its seventh coed to go with 11 men’s and one women’s.

The largest final day rally in NCAA championship history gave Colorado the school’s 25th overall national title, when combining three in men’s cross country, two in women’s XC and one in football.  It is CU’s second ski crown in three years, having won in 2011 in Stowe, and of the 19 total, nine have now been won in the east.

Since the sport went coed in 1983, this marked just the fifth time the third day or six-event leader did not hold on for the win, but the third time in the last six years.  Vermont rallied from 10 points down to New Mexico to win in 1992, and did so again in 1994 when trailing Utah by 31 points, previously the biggest comeback on the final day.  Denver rallied in both 2008 and 2009, overtaking a 17.5-point CU advantage and a two-point margin by UVM, respectively.

“It’s never happened that we had this young of a team, there is a lot of discipline involved and you don’t always display the maturity to do it in your freshman year,” CU head coach Richard Rokos said.  “Suddenly, you’re on a leash, you have to finish your runs.  It was our strategy to hold back a bit, and while it’s not perfect, it’s the only way to accommodate this format of racing.”

It was Colorado’s seventh national championship under Rokos, as he tied the legendary Bill Marolt, who coached CU to seven straight from 1972-78 before leaving to coach the U.S. National Team.  “That was my goal originally, to reach what Bill Marolt accomplished in seven years.  It took 23 years, but you know, seven isn’t my lucky number, so I’ll keep going,” Rokos joked.

Despite competing here with seven freshmen, easily the most by any contender, Colorado tallied 708 team points, with Utah taking over second after the last event with 665 points; Vermont, which had led after each of the first three days, finished in a distant third with 653, while Denver was fourth (629).  The leader at the midway point had won six straight and 10 of the last 12 times, and schools leading after three days (six events) had won 16 of the last 18.

“I don’t know if it’s totally hit me yet, I felt it was a pretty long shot entering the day,” CU Nordic coach Bruce Cranmer said.  “I knew we’d need some help from Vermont, which we got, but what an awesome day.  NCAA’s, anything can happen, and things happen quickly.

“Almost a 100-point swing for a day is pretty big,” he added.  “Obviously Vermont had some bad luck and probably didn’t have guys skiing their best, but credit our guys, everybody skied their hearts out.  The girls set the tempo, got us the lead, and once that happened, the guys knew they could maintain it.  I was too nervous to think we could do it, even in the men’s race with the lead.”

The women’s 15-kilometer race was first up Saturday, and set the tone for the day.  Senior Joanne Reid took the lead at the beginning and dipped into second just once after the second split, eventually pulling away from the field in an impressive winning time of 38:17.8.  At 20 years, eight months and nine days old, she became the third youngest Nordic female national champion, second youngest at CU to Kristen Petty (20, 2, 24) who won in 1985; Vermont’s Laura Wilson was a two-time champ in classic and freestyle in 1990, three months younger than Reid.

Senior Eliska Hajkova was second in 38:44.6, giving the Buffs two first-team All-Americans; it was the fifth honor for Reid and the fourth for Hajkova.  Freshman Maria Nordstroem played a key role as well despite battling illness and being on antibiotics, finishing 12th in 39:57.1 and helped earn 125 points scored by the CU women.  That was more than enough to overtake Vermont, which netted just 55, and it gave Colorado a 16-point cushion heading into the men’s race.

Reid’s mother, Olympic speed skating gold medalist Beth Heiden, won the cross country title skiing for Vermont in 1983, the first year the NCAA sponsored women’s skiing after absorbing the old AIAW (Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women).

“It feels amazing,” Reid said of her final collegiate race.  “My mom’s got connections here, she can do what she wants, so I saw her at the finish line and it was great.  It’s cool that we have both now won NCAA Individual titles.  Especially because every time I go skiing with here, they just list all her awards so now I have one that she has.  I just need a few more world championships in other sports now to catch up.”

“I was really worried about falling, because I’m small, and I get knocked pretty easily, so Eliska and I just decided to go out fast and get in front and go,” Reid said.  “I’m more comfortable leading.  I have a weird style so it’s hard for me to follow.  When I got passed, I just got really nervous that they would break away so I passed them right back.  I didn’t realize I had a gap, when you get a game there’s a hush over the crowd, that’s when I realized I had a breakaway.”

Reid is the sixth CU woman be crowned an NCAA freestyle champion, joining Anette Skjolden (1992), Line Selnes (1998), Katka Hanusova (2000), current CU assistant coach Jana Rehemaa (2006) and Maria Grevsgaard (2008).  It was her ninth win this year, third-most in a single season behind Selnes and Grevsgard, who had 11 those same years.  It was also Reid’s 11th career win, tying her for fifth all-time at Colorado, and the NCAA-leading 86th all-time a CU skier.

It was the sixth time at the NCAA Championships since 1983 that Colorado skiers produced a 1-2 finish, the first since 2008 when Grevsgaard and Lenka Palanova also did it in the freestyle, though that year it was a 5K.  In 2006, it happened in the 15k classic, with Rehemaa winning with Grevsgaard second.  CU also had 1-2 finishes in 1999 (women’s giant slalom), 1988 (men’s 20k classic) and in 1991 (men’s 10k freestyle).

“I’m so proud of Eliska, she was right next to me for most of the race, we inspire each other,” Reid said.  “That helped me.  She’s an amazing sprinter, and amazing skier, that made my race complete when she won the sprint to get second.”

              The men still needed to hold off Vermont, which had a strong men’s Nordic team that had captured four of the top nine spots in the East Regional.  The 20-kilometer race didn’t disappoint, as a lead pack never broke away from the rest of the field; just 28 seconds separated the top 13 skiers and just 40 seconds the next 12 after that.

And it was the tightest at the front of the race, where Utah’s Miles Havlick out-sprinted CU sophomore Rune Oedegaard at the very end, Havlick winning in 50:13.4 with Oedegaard six-tenths of a second back (50:14.0).

With coaches and staff calculating where the Buffs stood against Vermont throughout the race, it became apparent with one lap remaining that Colorado appeared to stave off any charge from the Catamounts.  Freshman Gustav Nordstrom finished in 51:10.1, less than 50 seconds out of the lead but 22nd overall, while junior Andreas Hoye was 32nd in 53:36.8.

Only one UVM skier was in the top 10 for any of the splits, and he soon vanished by the fourth split; the other Catamounts struggled, one rising out of the 20’s to 16th in the middle split, and the other actually in last for several splits until rising to 33rd in the end.  The Buffs actually wound up holding off a determined Utah squad, which placed two others in the top five behind Havlick and won the race with 133 team points while CU was third (73); Dartmouth was second with 90.

“What I was thinking was to stay in the lead all the way, have fun all day,” Oedegaard said.  “With what the girls did today, we knew it was our day headed into the race.  We all talked, Andreas and Gustav and myself, we knew we had the lead but we still wanted to chase, not be defensive. We want to chase this, we want to beat Vermont and do all we can.  During the race, I looked around and didn’t see any Vermont skiers in the top group and I knew we had it and I just wanted to enjoy it on the last lap.

“On the last uphill, I tried to push,” he continued.  “I felt like Miles and I, I knew we were going fast, but it was a big group going into the last uphill and we were both several seconds up on everybody else by the end.  I knew we were going fast, but he was so strong today, he wanted to revenge his fall from the first day, and when that happens, you can dig a little deeper.  At that point I knew we had the team win, and I had the win on Thursday, I maybe didn’t have as much as he did to pull from.

“This is more than I could’ve dreamt of going into the NCAA’s this year,” Oedegaard said.  “It’s such a credit to Bruce today, too.  We all felt like we had the best and the fastest skis on the course today.”

“It was a little weird,” Gustav Nordstrom said.  “This morning when I woke up, I didn’t really believe we could do it, I just tried to focus and have a good race and see what could happen.  After the girls, I was able to see that we could do it.  I was super nervous, I felt good, had good skis, I got a little tired in the end, but I was a little conservative.  It was nice when I passed the Vermont guys, I knew I had them behind me and I felt safe.  I saw them all the time.  I just focused on my own race, and when none of the Vermont guys were no longer ahead of me, I felt safe and then I focused on going as fast as I could.”

“I didn’t have the perfect day today, but it was enough for the team,” he added.  “This was such a team effort.  We didn’t have our best week, but we were solid and then we had some heroes like Rune and Joanne and Eliska taking a lot of points.

“Maria was really fighting today, we got some big heroes,” Nordstrom said of his sister.  “I feel sorry for the (other) Buffaloes that couldn’t be here today. This season has been really amazing; there are a lot of guys at home that could’ve done the same performances we did today.  It’s sad they couldn’t be here with us today.”

“We are looking forward to going home and start preparing for next year,” Rokos concluded.  “As soon as this thing ends, you’re already thinking about how to do it next year.”

The title is also the 454th national championship won by a Pac-12 Conference member school, the third this athletic year, joining Oregon (women’s cross country) and Southern California (men’s water polo).  It is CU’s first “live” contribution since joining the league in July 2011, as CU’s last national championship was also in skiing in March of that year, four months before becoming a Pac-12 member.

NCAA Championship Team Scores (Final, 8 events)— 1. Colorado 708;  2. Utah 665;  3. Vermont 653;

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