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Nov. 23, 2008
An inspired effort from both the men and the women erased a 12 point deficit in the second day of the Alaska Nordic Cup for a 44-40 Nanook victory over Alaska Anchorage.
The come-from-behind victory brings the Nordic Cup home to Fairbanks for the second consecutive year, and gives the Blue and Gold a 3-1-1 series lead.
Day two of the competition was a stagger start classic style race against the clock. The women went 5K while the men raced a 10 K.
After getting beat soundly yesterday, the men's team had a great performance on day two. "We came back with a vengeance today," Coach Scott Jerome stated. "We tend to ski classic pretty well, and the kids weren't worried about the score, they were just motivated by their sub par-performance yesterday."
Norway native Oyvind Watterdal led the way for the men and clocked in the fastest time of the day at 28:30.1. Teammate John Parry (Whitehorse, Yukon) finished second in the collegiate race, third overall, with a time of 28:42.4 and grabbed five big points for the Nanooks.
Einar Often (Tynset, Norway) had a clutch performance for the Blue and Gold. Often bested UAA's Rapheal Wunderel by five tenths of a second to take fourth place. "Einar beating Raphael by a half a second for fourth was big," said Jerome. "Those were huge points for us."
For the day, the men took first, second, and fourth to outscore the Seawolves 14-7.
The women, who were toe-to-toe with Anchorage yesterday, blew them out of the water today. Led by Julia Pierson (Traverse, MI), the women swept the top three spots and won day two 15-6.
Pierson crossed the line at 16:29.7 while freshman Theresia Schnurr (Buhlertal, Germany) finished second (16:42.1), and Elisabeth Habermann (Soldotna, AK) was third at 16:54.2.
"The women were just dominant today," said Jerome.
The overall winner for the women was UAF senior Aurelia Korthauer. Korthauer, of Germany, will ski unattached this whole season as she is red shirting this year. She posted a time of 15:47.5
Combining the men's and women's score on day two gave the Nanooks a 29-13 advantage. They needed every single point they could get as yesterday they were outscore 27-15. Alaska's monster effort in the second leg of the cup propelled them to a 44-40 overall victory.
