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Oles ski well over weekend

Sonja Bostrom
January 24, 2002

This past weekend, the St. Olaf Nordic ski team competed in their first two of eight NCAA Division I national qualifying races. The team is off to a great start with many individuals receiving solid NCAA qualifying points.

Unlike other sports that have a single regional race that determines who competes in the national meet, Nordic skiing has four weekends (a total of eight races) against their region. All of these races are weighted equally with competitors receiving points based on their finishing place. Their best two skate, and best two classic race points are combined and a team is chosen from that list to compete in the national meet in Anchorage Alaska.

In the classic race this weekend, Sonja Bostrom (Sr., St.Paul, Minn.)finished ninth, followed by captain Hillary McCulloh (Sr., St. Cloud, Minn.)in 18th and senior Mariah Stember (Bemidji, Minn.) in 42nd for a team finish of fifth place. On the men?s side it was Kevin Hochtl (Sr., Vail, Colo.) in 12th with John Giese (So., Mora, Minn.) and Jay Eidem ( Jr., Bloomington, Minn.) nipping at his heels in 15th and 17th places respectively. Kevin Johnson ( Jr., Plymouth, Minn.) rounding out the Ole squad in 21st giving the Ole men a solid third place team finish.

On the skate day, Bostrom was fourth, McCulloh 14th, and Stember, 44th, with an improved team place of fourth. The men sweated through their 15K race and ended up tying for fourth with rival school UW-Green Bay. Eidem led the men with an 11th place finish, followed closely by classic superstar Hochtl in 14th, and Johnson and Giese finishing 26th and 28th respectively.

Six St. Olaf skiers recently returned from competing in the Chevy Truck US Senior Nationals / Olympic Trials in Bozeman Montana. The Oles posted some good results and represented their school well. "Montana was very successful for myself " said captain Hochtl, "It was also a great experience to ski against the future Olympians". Senior Sonja Bostrom states that "the highlight of the week for me was my 16th place finish, the 12th American, at a race that is used to determine the Olympic team. I beat many of my heroes in that race, including four of the eight women selected to represent our country at the olympics this year! The Oles next set of races are this weekend in Ironwood, Michigan.

Full results from this weekend can be found at www.superiorlandskiclub.com under "NMU NCAA qualifier", and full results from senior nationals can be found at: http://www.skinnyski.com/racing/index.html , under "US Nationals Coverage". Also, be sure to follow the updates on our web page http://www.stolaf.edu/athletics/nordski/ and check out the pictures we recently added from our trip out west.

Contact Judy Stromayer at 507-786-3315 or stromaye@stolaf.edu.