Utah has its first individual winner at the NCAA skiing championships.
Erica Lavén placed first in the women’s 7.5K classic with a time of 23:43.3, finishing 11 seconds ahead of second-place Annie McColgan to bring home the individual title. Teammate Celine Mayer finished in fifth place and Selma Nevin took 14th, resulting in Utah finishing second, behind Dartmouth, in team scoring for the event.
“I felt like I opened at my own pace and didn’t want to open too hard,” Lavén said in a press release. “I feel like I did not (open too hard). That was my goal for today. I just kept on going and heard everyone from the team cheering on. I was pushing as hard as I could. It helped a lot to have the alpine team out here cheering.”
In the men’s 7.5K classic, Joe Davies finished in third place with a time of 21:19.53, and teammates Brian Bushey (21:51.9) and Zachary Jayne (22:12.5) weren’t far behind, all finishing in the top eight. Utah was again beaten out by Dartmouth in the event, finishing in second place.
Thursday’s finishes kept the Utes in the thick of it heading into the second half of the championships, but weren’t enough to move up in the standings, though Utah broke a third-place tie with Vermont.
“It feels great; we needed to come back after yesterday as we were a little bit down. But it swings fast in skiing. The points can go either way back and forth really quickly,” Utah director of skiing Fredrik Landstedt said in a press release. “We came here very excited to do well today. Today was probably one of our best days that I’ve seen in my years at Utah.”
Heading into Friday’s giant slalom, the Utes are alone in third place with 257 points, within striking distance of first-place Dartmouth (267.5) and Colorado (262).