It’s the first time I ever attended the event, which was scheduled for March 9-12. I arrived in SLC a couple days early to take in some alpine skiing on the front end.
If you didn’t know, the Skiing Utes won the last 3 NCAA ski titles. It would have been four if the 2020 championships in Bozeman Montana weren’t cancelled because of COVID after day 3 of the 4 day event, with the U holding an insurmountable lead.
There were about 50 Ute fans, we developed some camaraderie after socializing with each other at the two venues (Soldier Hollow – Nordic and Park City - Alpine) over the course of the competition. Plus, almost everybody you talked to was a skier. I met Spence Eccles (a former U ski team member) and his daughter Lisa. There were about 50 other fans from the 21 other schools entered in the competition. Each school is allowed only 3 competitors in each event.
The concluding event of the competition was the women’s Nordic freestyle. The Utes had a modest but not insurmountable lead. Dozens of female skiers took off en mass for the four lap 15k event. As they turned the corner and skated downhill into the small stadium at the conclusion of the first lap, it was a sight to behold, the 3 Utah skiers (Sophia Laukli, Novie McCabe, Sydney Palmer-Leger) had left the rest of the field in the dust (or should I say powder).
The ski team regularly achieves the highest graduation rate and/or GPA of the 20 athletic teams at the U. One of the ski lockers in the fabulous on campus Spence Eccles ski team building is sponsored by my wife and I in honor of our late son. The ski team roster for 2023 again appears pretty impressive.
Thanks for sharing this. The Ute ski teams are truly impressive and perpetually dominant. We should all be grateful to your family for your support of the team and to Spence for his financing portions of the new ski team building, which is an amazing building. Thanks for sharing!
I love to watch ski racing. Growing up in the 70s & 80s it seems like the only sports on TV on the weekends during the winter were ABC’s Wide World of Sports. They always showed worldcup races from Europe. I had posters of my favorite racers hanging in my bedroom.
One of the things I’m most proud of about the U is their continued success of the Ski team.
I think the bookstore should sell some UU ski team merchandise. I would buy it.
Where on campus is this Ski building? Id’ like to go look at it… Hell Ive never been to half of tee new sports buildings form the last decade (the 6 years lost to Nursing Home and COVID world have a lot to do with that).
Investigating this has led me to discover that, according to the latest Google Earth (Desktop, not mobile) flyover, The Annex building that had been on that corner of Capecchi and So. Campus Drive since WW2 is finally gone all the way… I’ve not had any reason myself to be up in that area since before the pandemic hit, so not surprised I hadnt seen anything personally.
