November 18, 2012 (Fairbanks, Alaska) – The Alaska Nanooks ski teams continued their dominance of UAA in their quest for the 2012 Nordic Cup, beating Alaska Anchorage in both the women’s and men’s events for the second straight day. The Blue and Gold carry a 54-30 lead after two days of racing at Birch Hill.

Alaska’s women repeated their Friday-night feat in sweeping the podium for a perfect 15 points, while UAA got 6 points for its top three racers in the five kilometer classic mass start event on Saturday afternoon. Five Nanooks crossed the line before UAA’s first skier and Alaska placed seven of its 10 racers in the top nine spots.

Junior Raphaela Sieber (Business Administration) beat Friday night’s sprint champion and senior Rebecca Konieczny (Biological Sciences) by 7.3 seconds for the Day Two crown. Sieber completed the course in 17 minutes and 5.2 seconds, while Konieczny finished in 17:12.5, followed by senior Marit Rjabov (Psychology) in 17:28.8.

“The women had another great day,” said head coach Scott Jerome. “I’m really pleased to see Raphaela get up in there; when she skis with confidence, she skis really well so it was fun to see that from her today.”

“Rebecca just had another heck of a day too. I know she can go fast at the sprint distances but she did it again today in the 5K and it was great (two times on the podium). I’m really pleased with the depth of the women’s team and how they performed.”

On the men’s side, it was a much closer battle but sophomore Logan Hanneman (Mechanical Engineering) repeated as the race champion completing the 7.5 km course in 22:15.2.

“He (Logan) loves racing at Birch Hill; he’s been doing it since he was probably five years old so he knows the course well,” said Jerome. “It was a really tight race, with the top seven guys under 16 seconds apart, until the last kilometer when Logan was able to open it up a little bit.”

UAA’s Viktor Braennmark (22:19.6) and Lasse Moelgaard (22:22.0) finished second and third, respectively, and were followed by a pair of Nanooks as senior Tyler Kornfield(Mechanical Engineering) was fourth in 22:23.2 and sophomore Jonas Löffler (Business) was fifth in 22:24.6. Loffler edged UAA’s third racer, Lukas Ebner, by 1.3 seconds to help the Nanooks edge the Seawolves 11-10.

“Our two, three and four (second, third and fourth) guys just couldn’t quite hang on with UAA but still for Tyler to be fourth and Jonas fifth, that really helped us out as far as point totals and it allowed us to win for the men by a point today and put us in better point position for the weekend.”

The teams combined for a 26-16 advantage on day two, augmenting their 28-14 lead after Friday night.

Sunday the teams will closeout the weekend event with both teams racing for 10 kilometer of freestyle pursuit. If the weather permits, the women will skate at 10:30 a.m. followed by the men’s event at 11:15 a.m. after which the 2012 Nordic Cup champion. Alaska is 5-2-1 in the all-time cup standings and seeking their sixth cup in the last seven years.