NCWSA Nationals Day 1 Recap

Yesterday the D-1 Mens and Womens slalom events were held.

The day started off with Womens slalom and as was expected the Florida Southern College(FSC) women came out strong placing 3 girls in the top 5 and all 4 scores were in the top ten giving them 1st place after one event with 2,190 points.  ULL took second without putting a girl on the podium and only had one in the top ten, but all 4 scoring girls placed well enough to give them second place with 1,925 points.  ULM is tight on their cross state rivals tail with 1,880 points led by a 3rd place finish by Makayla Haw.  Rollins College took 4th with 1755 and just 40 points behind is Alabama led by 1st place finisher Carolina Hensley with 1715 points.

Womens slalom scores
FSC  2190
ULL 1925
ULM  1880
ROL  1755
ALA  1715
ASU  1540
PUR  1325
KAN  1090
LAX  910
MOH  795
CIN  710
IWS  420

While Florida Southern College was the power in the Women's slalom event that dominance did not continue into Men's event, instead perennial power house ULM dominated the event taking 4th-7th place with their 4 scoring skiers and putting up 2,215 points, a full 235 points ahead of the second place finisher ULL.  ULL took second in both slalom events on Thursday on the back of event co-champion Ben Stadlbaur ending the event with a team score of 1,980.  3rd place went to the Sun Devils of ASU on the strong 3rd place finish of Stephen .  Alabama Neveu.  Alabama's highest placement was 10th with two 'bama skiers tieing.  FSC took 5th place led by the strong 1st place finish of KC Wilson.  KC won the first runoff in NCWSA Nationals history, the runoff was only for the medals and does not affect the scores.

ULM  2215
ULL  1980
ASU  1955
ALA  1835
FSC  1695
PUR  1400
ROL  1370
IWS  835
MOH  835
LAX  765
KAN  690
CIN  620

The big story leading into nationals this year was the new seeding format for D-1 and D-2 where only the regional champion was guaranteed a spot in D-1 while each region sent 5 teams and then 3 more wildcard teams were selected.  All 3 wildcard teams came from the Midwest.  If you have not noticed there are 6 midwest teams in division one, which is a testament to the strength of the midwest schools skiing programs.  But the question is will any of those midwest schools be able to knock off one of the traditional power house schools.

So far Purdue is the only midwest team to have beaten one of the "big schools" in an event, in this case it was Rollins falling to 7th with purdue taking 6th in Men's slalom.  We will see if any of the midwest teams can push their way up above 7th place in the final standings.  University of Wisconsin La Crosse won the midwest regional with a team that had the ability to possibly get into 6th place but from the looks of the running orders their top skier did not make the trip so they will not be a contender.  Purdue is perhaps the Midwests best hope.

Day one team combined scores.
1st  ULM  4095
2nd ULL  3905
3rd FSC  3885
4th ALA  3550
5th ASU  3495
6th ROL  3125
7th PUR  2725
8th KAN  1780
9th LAX  1675
10th MOH  1630
11th CIN  1330
12th IWS  1255

You can watch all the action on the webcast at http://ncwsa.skibennetts.com/
Tony Lightfoot announces all the action with quite an entertaining style.  Starting around 11:00 Eastern time will be the Women's D-1 jump event.

For a bit of Tony's announcing style check out this vid that went viral from the 2011 nationals.