Dartmouth skiing takes fifth at NCAA Championships

Un­able to shake up the stand­ings on the last day of the NCAA Cham­pi­onships, the Dart­mouth ski team pro­duced a fifth-place fin­ish with 523 points, be­com­ing the high­est ranked east­ern school at the com­pe­ti­tion. Last year’s cham­pion, the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver, re­tained its title with 785.5 points, while hosts Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado fin­ished in sec­ond place.

Fac­ing new com­pe­ti­tion on new ter­rain, the Big Green ad­justed rel­a­tively well, plac­ing third in the women’s five-kilo­me­ter clas­sic sprint and fourth in both the men’s slalom and the women’s giant slalom.

The women’s Nordic team was an­chored by a solid per­for­mance from Rosie Bren­nan ’11. Fin­ish­ing sec­ond in the five-kilo­me­ter clas­sic, Bren­nan con­cluded her third show­ing at the NCAA Cham­pi­onships with her best fin­ish yet.

The first day of rac­ing saw the alpine teams take part in the giant slalom race, where both the men and women’s teams pushed off to a solid start.

Ace Tar­berry ‘11, who ex­ploded into suc­cess this sea­son with his first event-win, took sec­ond place in the giant slalom to pro­pel his team to a fourth-place fin­ish. He pro­duced an­other high fin­ish two days later, gar­ner­ing fifth in the slalom event.

Court­ney Ham­mond ’11, who last year placed first in mul­ti­ple car­ni­val events and sixth in both of her NCAA Cham­pi­onships races, ended her first day of rac­ing in ninth place. Equip­ment is­sues have plagued Ham­mond through­out the sea­son.

The men’s Nordic team strug­gled in both its 10-kilo­me­ter clas­sic and 20-kilo­me­ter freestyle, as cap­tain Patrick O’Brien ’10 gave the Big Green its best fin­ish in 24th place in the clas­sic.

Tak­ing ninth in both events, the men’s Nordic team saw a stark con­trast to last year’s re­sults, when it placed third in the freestyle event and sev­enth in the clas­sic sprint.

The Nordic women, mean­while, fin­ished out the com­pe­ti­tion tak­ing fifth in the 15-kilo­me­ter free tech­nique, which saw Bren­nan pro­duce a fifth-place fin­ish.

This year’s re­sults show a jump in stand­ings for the Big Green, as it fin­ished in sev­enth place in last year’s com­pe­ti­tion at Bates Col­lege.

Al­though fac­ing daunt­ing al­ti­tudes and west­ern school com­pe­ti­tion that com­prises many more Eu­ro­pean skiers, Dart­mouth con­tin­ues to seek a first-place fin­ish at the NCAA’s, women’s Nordic head coach Cami Thomp­son said.

Dart­mouth last seized the na­tional cham­pi­onship in 2007, when the event was held close to home by the Uni­ver­sity of New Hamp­shire.

The Big Green’s reg­u­lar sea­son was a huge ac­com­plish­ment this year — the team skied un­de­feated through its car­ni­val sched­ule and was con­sis­tently ranked as third in the na­tion and the top team in the east.