March 09, 2013 (Middlebury, VT) – The University of Colorado rallied with a first place and two runner-up efforts to comeback from a 54-point deficit to win its 19th NCAA Championship on Saturday at the Rikert Ski Center. The Buffaloes tallied 708 team points, with Utah taking over second after the last event with 665 points. Vermont, which had led after each of the first three days, finished third with 653, while Denver was fourth with 629 points.

The women’s 15-kilometer FR race was first up on Saturday, and set the tone for the day as Colorado’s Joanne Reid took the lead at the beginning and dipped into second just once after the second split, eventually pulling away from the field with an impressive winning time of 38:17.8.

Joining Reid on the podium was teammate Eliska Hajkova in second with a time of 38:44.6, giving the Buffs two first-team All-Americans; it was the fifth honor for Reid and the fourth for Hajkova. Marine Dusser from UAA claimed the final podium spot.

“It feels amazing,” Reid said of her final collegiate race.  “My mom’s [Olympic speed skating gold medalist Beth Heiden] got connections here, she can do what she wants, so I saw her at the finish line and it was great.  It’s cool that we have both now won NCAA Individual titles. Especially because every time I go skiing with here, they just list all her awards so now I have one that she has. I just need a few more world championships in other sports now to catch up.”

“With the team drama, we just knew we needed the points, so we were going to go as fast as we could,” Hajkova said.  “It was on.  Joanne was just better today, she was so strong.  She went down the last hill and was just so much stronger.”

In the men’s 2okm FR race Utah’s Miles Havlick won his second career national title out-sprinting CU sophomore Rune Oedegaard at the very end, winning in 50:13.4 with Oedegaard only six-tenths of a second back (50:14.0). The second-place finish secured the Buffalos with the overall NCAA victory while Utah’s Einar Ulsund in third and Niklas Persson in 5th gave the Utes second-place overall. The lead pack never broke away from the rest of the field with just 28 seconds separating the top 13 skiers and just 40 seconds the next 12 after that.

“Wow! I can’t say enough good things about this team,” Havlick said. “It was an incredible day. Einar [Ulsund] and Niklas [Persson] skied some of the best races of the whole season and I couldn’t be happier to end my college career with a win! Huge thanks to the coaches and whole staff for the past four years. I’m looking forward to seeing the Utes take home that team championship in the next few years!

“It was a nice long sprint. I was able to get around some guys and kind of tuck in behind [second-place finisher] Rune [Oedegaard of Colorado] around that short corner and had enough to get by him. Everyone was really strong. It was a big pack throughout the race.”

Oedegaard was all smiles as well. “What I was thinking was to stay in the lead all the way, have fun all day,” commented Oedegaard.  “With what the girls did today, we knew it was our day headed into the race.  We all talked, Andreas and Gustav and myself, we knew we had the lead but we still wanted to chase, not be defensive. We want to chase this, we want to beat Vermont and do all we can.

“During the race, I looked around and didn’t see any Vermont skiers in the top group and I knew we had it and I just wanted to enjoy it on the last lap. This is more than I could’ve dreamt of going into the NCAA’s this year. It’s such a credit to Bruce [CU Nordic coach Bruce Cranmer] today, too.  We all felt like we had the best and the fastest skis on the course today,” he added.

The largest final day rally in NCAA championship history gave Colorado the school’s 25th overall national title, when combining three in men’s cross country, two in women’s XC and one in football.  It is CU’s second ski crown in three years, having won in 2011 in Stowe, and of the 19 total, nine have now been won in the east.

Despite competing to Middlebury with seven freshmen, easily the most by any contender, Colorado came out on top.  “It’s never happened that we had this young of a team, there is a lot of discipline involved and you don’t always display the maturity to do it in your freshman year,” CU head coach Richard Rokos said.  “Suddenly, you’re on a leash, you have to finish your runs.  It was our strategy to hold back a bit, and while it’s not perfect, it’s the only way to accommodate this format of racing.”

It was Colorado’s seventh national championship under Rokos, as he tied the legendary Bill Marolt, who coached CU to seven straight from 1972-78 before leaving to coach the U.S. National Team.  “That was my goal originally, to reach what Bill Marolt accomplished in seven years.  It took 23 years, but you know, seven isn’t my lucky number, so I’ll keep going,” Rokos joked.

Utah entered the final day of the meet in fourth place, but the Ute Nordic team put together 186 points during the Nordic Freestyle events and jumped ahead two places in the overall team standings with a combined four-day total of 665 points. Utah has finished in second place at the NCAA Championships each of the last three seasons.

“This has been one of the most amazing finishes in NCAA skiing I have ever witnessed!,” Utah Director of Skiing Kevin Sweeney said. “I am speechless at how hard the entire team charged today! It was simply magnificent. It is hard to put it into words exactly right.

“Thank you 2013 team! This was a wild and very rewarding championships for the record books. Utah Skiing is very much alive! A huge thanks goes out to Middlebury College for hosting a stellar championships and to the specific race venue organizers who had every detail 100% covered. Also very nice to see Pac-12 Conference schools Colorado and Utah go one and two! A huge thanks to my staff and support group is certainly in order no doubt.”

Full results HERE.

With files from University of Colorado and Utah Skiing.