Skiing Sending Full Complement to NCAA Championship

Clockwise from top left: Hannah Utter, Luke Allan, Kalle Wagner and Molly Gellert

Photo by: flyingpointroad.com

Skiing Sending Full Complement to NCAA Championship

3/1/2022 4:33:00 PM | Skiing

The Big Green qualified the maximum 12 skiers to compete in Utah next week

By: Rick Bender

HANOVER, N.H. — The NCAA announced the complete field of skiers that will compete at the Skiing Championship in Park City, Utah, and Midway, Utah, on March 9-12 hosted by the University of Utah. Dartmouth will be one of five schools to send the full complement of 12 skiers to compete for the national title.

Since the Big Green last won the championship in 2007, teams from the West have won 12 of the last 13 crowns (Denver six, Colorado and Utah three apiece). Vermont is the only Eastern team to interrupt that dominance, but that was 10 years ago. Not coincidentally, those four join the Big Green as the only teams to qualify 12 skiers. Both Middlebury and New Hampshire will send 11 skiers.

Of the dozen Big Green skiers competing, only two are returning to the NCAA stage. Senior Molly Gellert (Anchorage, Alaska) of the women's Nordic team and junior Cameron Wolfe (Landgrove, Vt.) for the men both skied in the 5K free at the 2020 championship in Bozeman, Montana, before the pandemic struck and shut down the last two days of competition.

Gellert, the top-ranked skier in the East in the freestyle, will be joined in the women's cross country races by another Anchorage native in sophomore Garvee Tobin as well as senior Rena Schwartz (Middlesex, Vt.). Gellert has won the last two 15K free carnival races, and Schwartz and Tobin have three podiums between them in freestyle this year. The Big Green will be without the services of freshman Jasmine Drolet, who stepped on the podium in all six races she entered, as she will be competing at the World Cup.

Wolfe is the elder statesman of the Dartmouth men's Nordic group headed to Utah, which includes freshmen Luke Allan (Ottawa, Ontario) and Wally Magill (Steamboat Springs, Colo.). Allen is the fifth-ranked skier in the East and has two podiums to his name with a win in the 10K free in the home carnival, while Magill and Wolfe are ranked eighth and ninth, respectively,

The Big Green women's alpine team is peaking at the right time of the year having won both the giant slalom and the slalom at the EISA Championship this past weekend. Fifth-year Hannah Utter (Waitsfield, Vt.) led the charge, winning the GS and placing fourth in the slalom, boosting her to sixth in the East rankings. Senior Ellie Curtis, who also hails from Waitsfield, is fifth in those rankings thanks to three podiums this year, and junior Gwen Wattenmaker (Olympic Valley, Calif.) is ranked seventh with four top-five finishes and a GS win.

Entering the weekend, the men's alpine squad had just one qualified skier in fifth-year senior Kalle Wagner (Fresno, Calif.) with two podiums in the slalom that put him fifth in the rankings. But a pair of young skiers in freshman Oliver Morgan, a local product from Hanover, and sophomore Olof Hedelin (Saltsjobaden, Sweden) came through with stellar performances at Cannon Mountain to make the cut. Morgan earned a podium in both the GS and slalom, while Hedelin placed fourth in the slalom.

The NCAA Championships, webcast live on NCAA.com, will begin on March 9 with the giant slalom at the Park City Mountain Resort. The cross country races will take place at Soldier Hollow Nordic Center on March 10 and 12 with the slalom sandwiched between the two.