CCSA Regionals Recap
By Corey Coogan
February 21, 2005
This weekend's CCSA event was the Regional Championships,
the race that decides the central region team champions, and
at which the individual NCAA qualifiers are named. Michigan
Tech hosted the event on their trail system using new course
layouts designed for the 2006 Junior Olympics. Saturday's
individual start classic events took place in ideal blue hard
wax conditions with fresh snow and temperatures in the teens.
Sunday's mass-start skate proved more "Houghton-esque,"
as a small snowstorm rolled through, softening conditions
and making teams' drives home more "exciting."
 z
Photo: Paul Damrow |
The weekend should have been a battle between University
of Alaska-Fairbanks and Northern Michigan University, but
instead NMU basically steamrolled a weakened UAF squad.
UAF's first challenge was having to leave NCCA qualifiers
Thomas Oyberg and Erik Wickstrom home due to sickness. Its
second came when NCAA qualifier Johanna Turunen fell ill in
Houghton and did not start on the second day. Further, their
number-two woman Kasandra Rice was coming off illness and
at Houghton raced for her first time in three weeks. Still,
the Nanooks showed their depth as their other four men raced
to second place, scoring 155 points to NMU's 169. NCAA qualifier
Jed Kallen-Brown led the men on both occasions taking second
in the classic and fifth in the skate. Also scoring for the
team were Tyson Flaharty (3rd in classic), Jonas Tetlie (8th
in classic, 11th in skate), and Marius Korthauer (6th in skate).
The Nanook women took fourth as a team. Johanna Turunen was
sixth in classic, Kasandra Rice had two top-15s, and Heidi
Rader was 13th in skate.
NMU's athletes put down a series of solid races in taking
both the men's and women's titles. Lindsay Williams went two-for-two
for the first time all season, emerging the winner in both
days of racing. Teammate Lindsey Weier took third in the classic
and second in the skate. Morgan Smyth was the third NMU scorer
in the classic, placing fourth, while Maria Stuber assumed
the NMU number-three role in the skate, placing fourth. On
the men's side, Bryan Cook won both races, giving him four
CCSA wins on the season. Bret Bedard took fifth in classic
and second in skate, Gus Kaeding was fourth in classic, and
Adriaan Ostrander was fourth in skate.
Michigan Technological University had a strong weekend on
their home course, as the men's team tied University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay for third place in the region. Aaron Ditty led the team
and earned All-Region (top-10) in both races, placing sixth
in classic and seventh in skate. Freshman Chris Harvey was
the team's number two skier on both occasions, finishing 11th
and 12th, respectively. Adam Airoldi was consistently Tech's
number-three with a 12th and 17th. Meanwhile, Kristina Owen
was the spoiler in the both races, as her second in classic
and third in skate prevented Northern's women from recording
a perfect score. Owen tried to take the skate win on her home
course by assuming the lead late in the skate race, but Williams
and Weier stayed back, drafted, and got Owen in the end. Teammate
Stephanie Oehlke had a second great weekend, taking two 16th
place finishers, and helping the MTU women earn fifth as a
team.
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay provided some of the biggest
excitement of the weekend. Sophomore Tanya Cook made for this
excitement by placing 9th in Saturday's classic, and thus
suddenly putting herself into contention to make the NCAA
team. Coaches crunched numbers on Saturday night and determined
that Cook need to finish sixth on Sunday to assure qualification,
but seventh to put herself in a three-way tie with teammate
Johanna Winters and UAF's Kasandra Rice. A tie would be broken
by determining percent back on the women's top-results.
On Sunday, Cook did indeed finish in seventh, and for that
she has two Johannas to thank: Johanna Turunen (UAF) and Johanna
Winters (UWGB). Had she raced, Turunen would have almost certainly
beat Cook, displacing her to eighth, but Turunen was sick
and did not start. In the final kilometer of Sunday's race,
Winters was seventh had gapped Cook who sat in eighth. Green
Bay skiers on the sidelines did the math, and screamed at
Winters to pull over and let Cook by. Winters had little information
to work with: no one had calculated the percent back, and
if she let Cook win, Winters might have the losing percent
back, and forgo her qualification. What Winters did was to
pull over, and let Cook win, saying to her later, "You
would have done the same for me." The math was not resolved
until Sunday evening, but the story has a happy ending, at
least for Green Bay: both Tanya Cook and Johanna Winters are
headed to NCAAs.
Tanya Cook and Johanna Winters' tough racing, plus the work
of Rosy Walsh (17th in classic, 15th in skate) brought the
Phoenix women second place in the team standings for the weekend.
As mentioned before, the UWGB men's team tied with MTU for
third. Ben Dubay and Ben Mogren were the team's leaders on
the weekend, as Dubay was eighth in classic, and Mogren was
third in skate. Andy Cheesebro, Bryan Gastonguay, and Shane
Hoelz (13th in skate) also scored for the Phoenix.
The Gustavus women had another big weekend, taking third
place, just eight points behind Wisconsin-Green Bay. In the
classic, the team put four in a row: Laura Edlund 12th, Kathleen
DeWahl 13th, Kelly Damrow 14th, and Katelyn Walker 15th, to
post a solid team score. On Sunday, Chandra Daw, Katelyn Walker,
and Nicole Olson had very strong races, placing 11th, 12th,
and 14th.
Photo: Paul Damrow |
For men, the best of the Division three schools was St. Olaf
College, who took fifth in the team standings. St. Olaf's
top-three men Jake Boyce, Oliver Garrison, and Nate Erlandson
each had one top-twenty finish over the weekend. Gustavus
was next, coming in sixth. Erich Ziegler had the team's best
result, 14th in the skate race. St. John's University, led
by Christian Brekke's two top-20s, took seventh. Finlandia
University, competing only in Saturday's classic race, was
eighth.
St. Olaf's womens team took sixth in the team standings with
the highlight of their weekend being Linn Dale's 17th in Sunday's
skate race. The College of St. Benedict finished seventh in
the team standings, but Kelly Wubbels had a breakout skate
race finishing 18th. St. Cloud State, led on both days by
Julie Warneke, finished eighth. Finlandia University, with
Michelle Kuure becoming the first Finlandia athlete to compete
in a CCSA skate race, was ninth.
Related links
|
