Zimmer Earns All-America Honors Once Again

Friday, March 10

Lake Placid, N.Y.

Dartmouth College

NCAA Day Three

Oscar Zimmer on the slalom course at the NCAA Skiing Championships, March 10, 2023

Freshman Oscar Zimmer

Photo by: NCAA

3/10/2023 1:44:00 PM | Skiing

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The freshman made the first team in both the giant slalom and the slalom for the Big Green

By: Rick Bender

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Freshman Oscar Zimmer headlined the Dartmouth alpine skiers on Friday at the NCAA Skiing Championships hosted by St. Lawrence, finishing fifth in the slalom to earn his a spot on the All-America First Team for the second time this week. The Big Green slipped three places in the team standings into seventh, however, with one day of racing remaining.

The top of the standings feature three teams from the West bunched near the top with Utah holding a 1.5-point lead over Colorado, 358-356.5, with Denver right behind with 346.5 points. Montana State has a four-point edge on Vermont for fourth place (243), and Westminster (225) is in sixth, directly ahead of Dartmouth (204.5).

"I was really happy with my performance, and it is a great honor to make the All-America team in both the giant slalom and slalom," Zimmer said after the podium ceremony. "Overall we didn't score like we are capable of, and the Nordic team is carrying us at the moment. But we know we have fast skiers and we are probably the youngest team here [11 of the 12 Big Green NCAA qualifiers are underclassmen], so we are excited about the future."

Caught up with Oscar Zimmer after the awards were handed out, hope you can hear him over the dance party vibe that is college alpine racing!#DartSki | ⁦@NCAASkiing⁩ | #GoBigGreen pic.twitter.com/QS51HQt7F5
— Dartmouth Ski Team (@DartmouthSkiing) March 10, 2023

It was a rare day of brilliant sunshine this winter in the Lake Placid area with calm winds and temperatures that went from just below freezing in the morning to the mid-30s by the afternoon, making for a terrific day of skiing at Whiteface. Freshman Oscar Zimmer, who earned first-team All-America honors on Wednesday in the giant slalom, put himself in the running to double up, zipping through the course with the sixth-fastest time at 53.68 seconds. His classmate, Cooper Puckett, wound up in the exact middle of the pack in 55.02 seconds, good for 17th, and sophomore Oliver Morgan started right after Puckett and improved upon his teammate's time by recording 54.31 seconds, putting himself just outside the top 10.

Utah's Wilhelm Normannseth had the time to beat at 52.98 seconds with Vermont's Mathias Tefre close behind in second (52.97). The Catamounts had all three skiers among the top seven times, setting themselves up nicely for the afternoon finish.

The Big Green women had only two skiers in the race after sophomore Carly Elsinger was injured during the first run of the giant slalom two days ago. Disaster struck Dartmouth when both sophomore Allie Resnick and senior Gwen Wattenmaker slipped gates during their runs. Although Resnick valiantly hiked up a good portion of the final hill, she didn't quite make it back far enough and was disqualified.
But Wattenmaker's efforts did not go unrewarded as she contributed two points to the team score by finishing in 29th in the standings.

The giant slalom champion, Madison Hoffman of Utah, jumped out to the lead once again and finished off the sweep, winning the event by just under a full second in 1:49.37. Denver put two of its skiers on the podium as well with Nora Brand (1:50.34) and Sara Rask (1:50.36) with nearly identical times, allowing the Pioneers to tally 90 points to lead the field.

Checking back with the men for the afternoon, Puckett made his move during the second run, pushing hard to post the sixth-fastest time, which allowed him to briefly take the lead with a combined time of 1:51.33. Morgan saw his chances of making the top 10 dissolve with a DNF, but when Zimmer completed his tour of the course, he was sitting in second place at 1:50.68, a quarter of a second off the time of Westminster's Mikkel Solbakken, with Puckett had in sixth. With five skiers remaining, the questions were whether Zimmer could hang on to a top-five slot and Puckett could find his way into the top 10.

Herny Heaydon of Montana State nearly fell back behind Puckett, yet managed to cross the tape with a 0.22-second overall advantage. And when another MSU skier, Gianluca Boehm, dropped back into eighth place, Zimmer wound up in fifth to earn his spot on te All-America First Team once again. Tefre took the gold in 1:49.32, beating out Normannseth by more than three-quarters of a second (1:50.11) and Tefre's teammate Joachim Lindstoel (1:50.38) completed the podium. Puckett just missed out on the top 10, however, finishing 11th, just shy of earning All-America honors.

The NCAA Skiing Championships will conclude with tomorrow's classic races at Mt. Van Hoevenberg on Saturday. Both the men and women will test their endurance in 20K races, starting with the men at 10 a.m. Fans can keep up with the action by watching the live stream and checking out the live timing through the NCAA website. Visit the Dartmouth skiing schedule page on the official website of Big Green athletics, DartmouthSports.com, for direct links.

Notes: Zimmer is the first Big Green skier to earn first-team All-America honors in both the giant slalom and slalom since Tanguy Nef '20 won the slalom and finished second in the GS in 2018 … the highest Dartmouth can finish is fourth place, which is where it would finish if the scoring from yesterday's classic races were duplicated in the freestyle tomorrow.