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HOUGHTON, Mich. – Alaska had two men's skiers place in the top five of the 15-kilometer free skate mass start on Sunday to finish second at the 2014 NCAA Central Region Championship at the Michigan Tech Nordic Ski Trails.
 
The Nanooks led the standings after day one, in which it took second, third and fourth places in the 10K classic, but holding just a narrow three-point lead, Northern Michigan grabbed the top-two spots and a sixth-place finish to erase the deficit and win the men's title by seven points.
 
Sophomore Michael Fehrenbach (Saint Märgen, Germany/Mechanical Engineering) led the charge with a fourth-place finish after he completed the three-loop race in 41 minutes, 22.5 seconds, which was 24.6 seconds off the lead pace of region champion George Cartwright of NMU, who won in 40:57.9.
 
Immediately following Fehrenbach was his teammate, junior Logan Hanneman (Fairbanks, Alaska/Mechanical Engineering), who crossed the finish line a second later in 41:23.5 to take fifth place.
 
Both Fehrenbach and Hanneman were named to the All-Central Region Team for finishing in the top 10 of the mass start race.
 
The Nanooks' scoring was complete once senior Max Olex (Aalen, Germany/Business Administration) came in to place 11th with a time of 42:23.0.
 
Alaska posted a team score of 56 points from the three scoring Nanooks to complete the men's championship score at 122 while Northern tallied 66 points Sunday to total 129 to claim the region crown.
 
Three other Alaska men competed Sunday placing in the top 20 while being separated by only 11 seconds.
 
Freshman Isaac Lammers (Eagle River, Alaska/Mechanical Engineering) completed his solid weekend with a 16th-place outing in 43:36.5, and nearly put himself in the top 15 with a late surge with one other in the home stretch but Michigan Tech's Matthew Wong was able to cross the line only four-tenths-of-a-second faster.
 
Junior Jonas Löffler (Saint Märgen, Germany/Business Administration) followed Lammers in with a time of 43:42.9 to secure 17th place and sophomore Kenneth Brewer (Chugiak, Alaska/Biological Sciences) rounded out the day in 19th place with a time of 43:47.6
 
Following the champion Northern Michigan and runner-up Alaska in the overall team standings were College of St. Scholastica (93), Michigan Tech (86), Gustavus Adolphus (59), St. Olaf (55) and Wisconsin-Green Bay (44).
 
In the combined championship, Northern won with a men's and women's total score of 257, while Alaska took silver with 221 points. CSS earned the third-place spot on the podium with 202 points.
 
Alaska's men's skiers will now wait to find out their fate for the 2014 NCAA Championships, which takes place March 6 and 8 in Midway, Utah. The selections will be made and finalized after the other regions complete their championships next weekend.