AMHERST, Mass. - The UMass Women's Ski Team captured a trip to the USCSA Nationals next weekend after their fifth place finish in last weekend's ECSC Regionals. The Minutewomen placed three skiers in the top-15 during both days of the Regionals. The Men's team, the defending USCSA National Champions, will not be returning to the Nationals after their sixth place finish over the weekend. The Minutemen had a tough day in Saturday's Slalom, finishing in ninth place before recovering with a second place finish in the Giant Slalom.

Coach Fox's general thoughts on last weekend's ECSC Regionals:
This weekend was bitter/sweet for the UMass Ski Team. In short the Minutewomen had a good showing placing 3 ladies in the top 15 in both the slalom and giant slalom, thus qualifying for the USCSA National Championships in Winter Park, Colorado in 5th place for the eastern region (the top 5 teams in the east qualify for National's in both men and women).

The men however, had a day in the slalom on Saturday that just could not happen, but did. In the USCSA Regional's 5 people race per team and the best 3 times are used to calculate the finish for the day. Then the place points for each day are added together and the 5 teams with the lowest point totals are invited to the Nationals. The good news for the men was that Alex Zahoruiko received an individual invitation to the Nationals for his two day combined results.

What went wrong with the men's team in Saturday's Slalom?
In the men's slalom junior co-captain Andrew Hawes (Concord, Mass.) was having a great first run when he got caught up, his ski ejected and he went head over heels. The day was done for Andrew. Then junior Matthew Small (Shelburne Falls, Mass.) came down in the first run and was thrown forward by a rut in the snow and straddled a gate, he then spun around with his skis, Matt thinking when he spun around that his skis had gone threw the gate. However, he was disqualified. That's two down. So the remaining three skied the first run course without incident in the first of two runs.

All Stefan Ogle had to do was ski the course and the Minutemen would be OK, not where they wanted to be, but OK. Stefan came out of the start determined to finish as per Coach Anderson's instructions. Then 15 gates into the course something that never happens, happened, Stefan's rear binding literally broke in half. He would have finished the 54 gate course on one leg and one ski, but that is against the rules. The Minutemen were doomed to ninth place for the day because their 3rd time was a ghost time, which equals the worst time of the day plus 10 %.

How did the Minutemen recover in Sunday's Giant Slalom?
The next day in the giant slalom the boys knew what they had to do and did it with Hopkins coming in fifth, Zahoruiko coming in seventh and Small coming in ninth for a team placing of second for Sunday, but it was not enough to over take Boston College's fifth place with nine total place points to UMass' sixth place 11 place points for the two days.

Coach Fox's thoughts on the Minutewomen's route to the USCSA Nationals:
The women however had a fine showing in Saturday's slalom having junior Captain Emily Shilletto (Toronto, Ont.) place ninth and sophomore Amy Gifford (Readfield, Maine) placing 14th and junior Heidi Skinner (South Londonderry, Vt.) placing 15th for a team finish of fifth. The next day the women rose again to the challenge and put three in the top 15 again. This time in the giant slalom sophomore Abby Nolan (Duxbury, Mass.) lead the way placing fifth, with Shilletto in tenth and Skinner in 12th, placing the team in fourth place for the day, and fifth place for the weekend, thus generating an invitation to the USCSA National's in Winter Park next week.