[Overall Men's Points] [
Overall Women's Points]
[Men's 3x5K Relay Results] [
Women's 3x5K Relay Results]
HOUGHTON, Mich. - It was a Blue and Gold day for the Alaska Nanooks men's skiing team as they captured their third Central Collegiate Skiing Association title in program history on Sunday morning at the league championship at the Michigan Tech Nordic Training Center.
NMU won the overall CCSA title handily with 498 points, while the Nanooks took second for the second straight year with 469 points. MTU took bronze with 414 points and CSS was fourth out of eight teams with 366.
The Nanooks, who led the men's team standings after the first two events, finished second on the day to Northern Michigan in the 3-by-5-kilometer freestyle relay Sunday morning. However, their 17-point lead after the first two scoring races was enough to carry them to the top of the podium for their first CCSA Men's title since 2006 and third overall. The first won the men's league championship in 2004.
Alaska's A-relay team, composed of senior Erik Soederstroem, freshman
Ludwig Schott and junior
Tyler Kornfield, ousted NMU's B-team by two tenths of a second (38:07.0) for a silver finish but the Wildcat's A-relay won the event by almost 30 seconds in 37:27.7.
As such, NMU's men won Sunday's relay 87-78, but the Nanooks ousted them 248-240 as the overall men's victor. College of Saint Scholastica finished third with 200 points and host Michigan Tech was fourth with 185 points.
The Nanooks' B-relay, made up of rookie Jonas Loeffler, junior
Ian Wilkinson and senior
Alex Morris, finished 6th in 39:31.8.
Despite entering the weekend in first place in the team standings, Alaska's women finished third overall with 221 points, trailing the women's champion NMU (250 points) and runner-up MTU (229 points).
NMU's women's A-relay team took the top spot in 44 minutes 42.4 seconds and MTU's A and B teams finished second and third before Alaska's A-team - freshman
Alyson McPhetres, sophomore
Raphaela Sieber and junior
Marit Rjabov - took fourth in 46:03.5.
The women's B-relay (sophomore
Heather Edic, freshman
Heidi O'Connor-Brook and junior
Crystal Pitney) finished seventh in 46:42.0.
With the league championships behind the, the Blue and Gold turn their focus to next weekend's NCAA Central Region Championships at the Al Quaal Recreation Area in Ishpeming, where individual skiers will look to qualify for a trip to the NCAA Championships in Bozeman, Mont. next month. The Central Region has eight spots for men and seven for women, which makes for an extremely tough task to qualify skiers, let alone a full team of three.
Alaska already has two automatic qualifiers on the men's side in junior
Tyler Kornfield and freshman
Logan Hanneman but will hope to see a third qualifier and three women secure berths so they can field a full team of six skiers for the national championships for the first time since 2008. That was the last time the Nanooks rostered a full squad at the NCAA Championships and conincidentally the last time the championship event was held in Bozeman.
It proved a historic showing for the Nanooks as former skier Marius Korthauer captured the NCAA Individual Championship title in the men's 20-kilometer classic race and the Nanooks earned five All-American accolades behind performances from Korthauer, Vahur Teppan and
Anna Coulter.
