UAA Athletics

UAA alpine ski team returns from long road trip for some home-hill training and racing

The UAA alpine ski team is headed back to Alaska after a long stretch of competition in Colorado with nine top-10 finishes in a dozen NCAA races.

The best finishes during the long road trip came from Georgia Burgess, who started the road trip with a career-best fourth-place finish in a women’s giant slalom race in Aspen Highlands Ski Resort at the start of the trip, and Didrik Nilssen, who placed seventh in a men’s giant slalom race at Eldora Mountain Resort on Wednesday.

“We’re all fired up to get home and dial up the intensity,” alpine coach Sparky Anderson said in a release from UAA. “It’s a fun group, and I can’t wait to get back to work with these kids on our home hill.”

The Seawolves competed in the Denver Invitational in Aspen, the Colorado Invitational in Eldora, and a pair of Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association (RMISA) races that bookended the invitationals.

Rebecca Fiegl of Austria was UAA’s most consistent skier, with top-12 finishes to lead the Seawolves in five of the six women’s races.

Her best result was eighth place in a Friday slalom race at Eldora. She also posted finishes of 10th place in both the RMISA giant slalom race in Aspen and the Denver Invitational GS, 11th in the Denver Invitational giant slalom and 12th in the Denver Invitation slalom.

UAA’s other top-10 finishes came from men’s side, and all of them came in the RMISA races.

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In the giant slalom in Aspen, Nilsen led the team in seventh place, Dominic Unterberger was ninth and Olav Sanderberg 10th.

In the slalom at Eldora, Michael Soetaert finished a career-high eighth.

The Seawolves will spend the next several days training in Anchorage and Girdwood and return to action the first week of February for FIS races at Alyeska Ski Resort.

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