Skiiers come close to meeting goals

When the Penn State ski team began preparing for the season in early January, its members set their sights on three goals.

The first two tasks were accomplished rather easily, with both the men's and women's teams ripping through the Allegheny conference with undefeated records, and both winning the Mid-Atlantic region en route to college skiing's version of the "big dance."

Once Penn State ski teams arrived in Lake Tahoe, Nev., for nationals, however, they were introduced to a level of competition they had not seen all season. Under the snowy skies at the Diamond Peak Ski Resort, the two teams struggled to find the success they had earlier in the winter.

When the final results for the three-day competition from March 5-8 were calculated, the men found themselves tied for 12th (11th in slalom, 13th in giant slalom) with Wisconsin. The women finished tied for 14th (12th, 16th) with California-Davis.

Sierra Nevada College dominated the men's field, taking first in both the slalom and giant slalom events and easily capturing the overall championship. Whitman College captured overall first-place honors for the women.

Ryan Church, a Penn State sophomore standout who finished the regular season as the combined Allegheny conference champion, said the quality of racers at the competition was phenomenal.

"The competition out there is unbelievable," he said. "I've never been to a race with so many great racers before."

Church said the fact skiing is not a varsity sport at Penn State and doesn't receive as much funding as most other schools at the championships presented a few problems for the team. Some of the teams at the championships were even fully sponsored by some of skiing's biggest corporations.

Penn State coach Lee Gonder said the team was most hurt by the length of the course.

"It's really tough when you have to ski that far and that fast, and we just don't have that kind of terrain around here," he said.

Despite the team's failure to finish in the top 10, Gonder said the season was a huge success, and this was the strongest group of racers he's seen at Penn State.

Gonder said this was the best finish for the women's team since it finished seventh overall in 1985 and the best overall performance for the men since their eight-place finish that same year.

Team captain Ty Rost said the team actually was more encouraged than depressed by its performance, especially since the men only finished half a second out of the top 10 in the slalom.

"If we went out there and everyone had the run of their lives, and we still finished 12th, that would have been depressing. But that didn't happen, and we saw that we can compete with these guys," he said. "I think we gained a lot of confidence out there."

Senior Betsy Marsh said the women were most disappointed with their performance in the giant slalom, but nonetheless she enjoyed her time out West.

"It's different going out there and not being No. 1 because we dominated our region," Marsh said, "but it's still real exciting going out and racing against teams of that caliber."

Church said he is looking forward to next season, when the men's team returns its top five skiers. The women, on the other hand, lose two of their top five to graduation.

"Now we know what we need to do to compete at that level," Church said. "The experience of being out there just psyched us up and motivated us more for next season."