East’s lack of snow may work in Utah’s favor at NCAA Skiing Championships

Skiers like snow. That’s the theory anyway. And this winter, Utah’s mountains are practically drowning in it.

Given that, JJ Johnson, the head alpine coach for the University of Utah’s ski team, realizes people might raise an eyebrow at the way the team wants its training hill at Utah Olympic Park to be groomed. To some, it’s almost sacrilegious. Others, he said, simply “think it’s the stupidest thing in the world.”

That’s because when the run is coated in a fresh layer of powder, they scrape it down to ice.

It may not be as fun to ski, but it is fast. Plus, it’s more akin to what the Utes and the Westminster College ski team will slide on this week at the NCAA Skiing Championships. St. Lawrence University will host the races at Mount Van Hoevenberg and Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid, N.Y. The region has seen more snow and cold temperatures than most of the East this winter but nothing compared to what’s blanketed the West.

The Utes — who are pursuing their fourth straight national team championship and fifth in seven years — aren’t complaining, though. Given their druthers, they’d take manmade snow, clear skies and crisp air over a foot of powder on race day every time. That goes both for Johnson’s alpine athletes and the Nordic team.

“I think pretty much across the board you don’t really want to snow during the races,” said Luke Jager, a senior who represented the United States in cross country skiing at the Beijing Olympics. “I think no one really wants that. It’s really hard for waxing. The skiing is a lot harder. It’s a lot slower and it just kind of makes everything a major pain in the butt.”

It looks like the athletes will get their wish. No more than 4 inches are expected on Whiteface’s runs between when the event kicks off with the giant slalom on Wednesday and when the team champion is crowned Sunday. OpenSnow.com forecasts most of that will fall Saturday, after the alpine events have wrapped up.

More than 600 inches of snow has fallen at two of Utah’s 15 resorts this winter. Most, if not all, have seen at least 200 inches. Whiteface, meanwhile, has gotten 133 inches of snow this season, according to its website. That puts it on par with its annual average of 156 inches but also puts it far ahead of many of its regional brethren. Three resorts in the East closed before the end of February citing lack of snow plus warm temperatures. Another 25 will close this weekend, according to OntheSnow.com.

No one could predict that would be the situation when St. Lawrence was selected as host. The NCAA championships have alternated between East and West sites for at least the past couple of decades, with Utah hosting last year. Vermont’s director of skiing, Bill Reichelt, said in the 21 years he’s been involved, the event has never been relocated to another region.

There was no talk of that this year, either.

Still, the scarcity of snow created frustrating snags for some teams. Reichelt said his team had its best fall camp ever in Colorado last year. When it returned home, it had to hunt for snow to train on and saw its race schedule disrupted by postponements and cancellations. He said that was mentally taxing for athletes and coaches alike.

“There’s definitely a certain amount of hurry up and wait with the sport that everyone’s used to,” he said. “But this year has been pretty exceptional, I would say, as far as weather kind of getting in the way of us doing what we’re trying to do.”

That’s all in the past, though. What Vermont is trying to do this week is unseat the Utes and win a national title.

The Catamounts almost did it last year on Utah’s home soil. Vermont entered the final race, the women’s 15-kilometer freestyle, down just 23 points in second place. It saw that deficit nearly tripled, however, after Utah unleashed two Olympians and a two-time NCAA champion in Sophia Laukli, Novie McCabe and Sydney Palmer-Leger to become the first host team to win the NCAA title in 16 years.

So yes, a few months ago Reichelt would have liked to have shared in the storms that dropped piles of powder on Utah seemingly every couple days. This week, though, he’s anti snow — at least in the form of fresh powder. And so, it seems, is pretty much every skier on the course.

“It sounds kind of counterintuitive,” he said, “but on the Alpine side, once you have enough and have a surface that’s fair, you don’t want any more snow.

“It becomes just a mess to clean up.”

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