Cochran and strong group of current NCAA racers impressive at nationals

Cochran and strong group of current NCAA racers impressive at nationals{mosimage}Exactly one year before winning back-to-back national titles, Jimmy Cochran was a University of Vermont student earning his way onto the U.S. Ski Team. When he won the national slalom title this year at Alyeska, his win was just the most obvious sign of health from the world of NCAA racing. The slalom was stacked with college students from back east.

Warner Nickerson, a junior at Colby College, had a huge slalom race, turning in the second-fastest second run (0.05 behind Miller) and finishing fourth overall. Nickerson was one of four current collegiate skiers in the top 10 that day. The other three were Dartmouth’s Roger Brown, Eric Kankainen and Paul McDonald, who finished sixth, seventh and eighth.

Nickerson will be a senior at Colby College next year, and wants to qualify for the U.S. Ski Team after that. “A lot of people have a skewed view of college racing,” says Nickerson. “I’d argue that it’s the most intense category of racing in the U.S.” Nickerson, who trained extensively and independently last summer in New Zealand, keeps a meticulous journal of his development, tracking his technical and tactical experiments, according to Colby coach Mark Godomsky.

“College skiing is obviously doing a good job developing skiers,” said Peter Dodge, the men’s alpine coach at Dartmouth, in an e-mail that began circulating the next day. “What is frustrating is that it could be contributing so much more if the Ski Team, the industry and the press would believe in it and support it.”

Even in the downhill, ski teamers had to make space for a college kid. David Duncan, a sophomore at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, came from the 41st start position to finish ninth. Duncan, who wasn’t even selected by his college coach to attend the NCAA Championships this year, is from London, Ontario, where he learned to ski on a mountain with a 200-foot vertical drop, according to his coach at UAA, Jeff Rust.

“I think if you look at the college racers, they’re ready to cope with the pressure,” said Cochran at the end of the week. “They’re ready to cope with the type of situation that you’re in when you’re in the lead or close to the lead going into the second run and you have to do it again.”