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University of New Hampshire Athletics
The Wildcats celebrated their 6th-place finish in the NCAAs in March in Utah.
Insider Report: Skiing's Super Month
4/11/2022 2:13:00 PM | UNH Insider, Skiing
'Cats Celebrate Best NCAA Finish, More Success in The (603) Challenge
DURHAM, N.H. – Cory Schwartz, longtime Nordic coach and coordinator of the University of New Hampshire ski program, and his group have had quite a month and keep raising the bar of success.
The excitement started at the 2022 NCAA Ski Championships in Utah last month.
The Wildcats worked their way up each day at the event to grab sixth place, their best result since the women's and men's teams were combined for one score in 1982.
"We're very excited about how everyone skied," Schwartz said. "Not only did we have some really good top results, but everyone contributed to the sixth-place finish. To do it the week of the NCAAs is special. Everything has to come together."
The success has rolled into The (603) Challenge, the dynamic and competitive university-wide fundraiser that started last Friday at 12:01 a.m. and continues through Tuesday, April 12 at 11:59:59 p.m.
The ski team has garnered the highest number of donors during the fundraiser in each of the last six years and was well on its way to doing it again this time around. With less than 36 hours to go, more than 500 individuals had donated more than $90,000 to the ski team. The total was nearly double the total of donors to the next closest sports, football and men's soccer.
Before The (603) Challenge began, director of athletics Marty Scarano noted that the job Schwartz and his team do connecting with their alumni and friends has always been so impressive that their approach has been used as a model for other teams in the fundraiser.
Funds raised by teams during The (603) Challenge go directly to the teams chosen by donors, to be used at the discretion of the coaches.
Schwartz has been the Nordic head coach for 40 years and the ski coordinator for 35 and Brian Blank has been the alpine head coach for 15 years. Both are former Wildcat skiers.
They played up last month's NCAA results as well as their overall season leading into The (603) Challenge.
"Hopefully our alumni will continue to support us as we rise nationally," Schwartz said before the fundraiser began. "Besides the support from the university, we're also heavily supported by our alums and that allows us to do all the outside races and camps and it helps handle other things, like equipment needs."
Everything came together nicely in Utah.
The Wildcats were in 10th place after the first day of competition, which featured women's and men's Nordic classic races as well as women's and men's giant slalom races. The alpine races had been postponed a day because of snow.
UNH moved up a couple of spots to eighth after the slalom races on Friday.
Schwartz thought there was room to move a little higher going into the final races, the Nordic freestyle, on Saturday, March 12.
As Schwartz, the head coach on the Nordic side, and assistant Shane McDowell waxed skis for their athletes they calculated that with a good day they could get as high as seventh, which would be a very good result for the Wildcats.
Schwartz revised his estimate upwards again after the first couple of laps of the last race of the championships – the 15-kilometer women's freestyle - as he watched sophomore Jasmine Lyons, freshman Lisa Nystedt and junior Luci Anderson perform.
"Jas was in a group of about the fifth to tenth spots and Lisa was right in there, too, and Luci was just outside the top 20," Schwartz said. "Watching where Montana and a couple of other schools were, we knew we were going to move up if they finished well."
They finished very well, especially Lyons. She kept coming and picked off racers along the way and ended up third, behind a pair of University of Utah skiers, Sophia Laukli and Novie McCabe, both of whom competed for the United States in February at the Olympics in Beijing.
Nystedt was 15th and Anderson 24th and the three women led UNH to third in the event and lifted the Wildcats to that sixth-place overall finish.
The only time UNH turned in a better finish was in 1971 when the men were fifth.
Schwartz was pleased with the season overall, but in particular the last couple of competitions.
The UNH Carnival, hosted by the school at Jackson Nordic and Cannon/Mittersill, doubled as the Eastern Intercollegiate Skiing Association Championships and NCAA East Regionals and gave a preview of what was to come.
There, the Wildcats were an impressive second to Vermont.
UNH held its spot and was the second team in the East behind Vermont on the NCAA stage as well. Utah won its third straight NCAA title and Vermont was second with Denver, the University of Colorado and Alaska-Anchorage leading into the Wildcats.
Blank and his alpine skiers had their last competition on Friday at Park City Mountain Resort and were there to cheer the Nordic men and then women on at Soldier Hollow Resort.
"It was an exciting day," Blank said. "It was a lot of fun. At the need of the day, the team result is the ultimate goal for sure and everyone played their part."
Schwartz and Blank are both excited about continuing to raise the bar for the program. Each team loses athletes to graduation, but has a solid core back as well, including those who competed in the NCAAs this year and others who came close and will be striving to achieve that goal.
Lyons, an alternate on the Canadian Olympic team this year, and Luci Anderson will be back on the Nordic side and all three of the men Nordic skiers who competed at the NCAAs – junior Scott Schulz, sophomore Seth Wyatt and freshman Roger Anderson - are back. Nystedt will not return. She is heading home to Sweden.
On the alpine side, grad student Bastian Meisen, who earned first-team All American honors with a fifth place in the giant slalom, has used up his eligibility and fellow grad student Will Bruneau-Bouchard has, too.
Junior Marius Solbakken, who scored in both the slalom and giant slalom races, is back. Sophomore Peder Nersnaes qualified for the NCAAs, but was not one of the three athletes who made the cut for UNH this year and will be looking to change that.
Senior Fanny Sanderberg, 11th in the slalom, graduates. Freshman Zoe Michael was a second team All American thanks to her 10th place finish in slalom and returns.
Lisa Olsson, an NCAA qualifier in years past, just missed making it this year and is excited about returning to the team next year and taking another shot at the NCAAs as a grad student.
Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu
The excitement started at the 2022 NCAA Ski Championships in Utah last month.
The Wildcats worked their way up each day at the event to grab sixth place, their best result since the women's and men's teams were combined for one score in 1982.
"We're very excited about how everyone skied," Schwartz said. "Not only did we have some really good top results, but everyone contributed to the sixth-place finish. To do it the week of the NCAAs is special. Everything has to come together."
The success has rolled into The (603) Challenge, the dynamic and competitive university-wide fundraiser that started last Friday at 12:01 a.m. and continues through Tuesday, April 12 at 11:59:59 p.m.
The ski team has garnered the highest number of donors during the fundraiser in each of the last six years and was well on its way to doing it again this time around. With less than 36 hours to go, more than 500 individuals had donated more than $90,000 to the ski team. The total was nearly double the total of donors to the next closest sports, football and men's soccer.
Before The (603) Challenge began, director of athletics Marty Scarano noted that the job Schwartz and his team do connecting with their alumni and friends has always been so impressive that their approach has been used as a model for other teams in the fundraiser.
Funds raised by teams during The (603) Challenge go directly to the teams chosen by donors, to be used at the discretion of the coaches.
Schwartz has been the Nordic head coach for 40 years and the ski coordinator for 35 and Brian Blank has been the alpine head coach for 15 years. Both are former Wildcat skiers.
They played up last month's NCAA results as well as their overall season leading into The (603) Challenge.
"Hopefully our alumni will continue to support us as we rise nationally," Schwartz said before the fundraiser began. "Besides the support from the university, we're also heavily supported by our alums and that allows us to do all the outside races and camps and it helps handle other things, like equipment needs."
Everything came together nicely in Utah.
The Wildcats were in 10th place after the first day of competition, which featured women's and men's Nordic classic races as well as women's and men's giant slalom races. The alpine races had been postponed a day because of snow.
UNH moved up a couple of spots to eighth after the slalom races on Friday.
Schwartz thought there was room to move a little higher going into the final races, the Nordic freestyle, on Saturday, March 12.
As Schwartz, the head coach on the Nordic side, and assistant Shane McDowell waxed skis for their athletes they calculated that with a good day they could get as high as seventh, which would be a very good result for the Wildcats.
Schwartz revised his estimate upwards again after the first couple of laps of the last race of the championships – the 15-kilometer women's freestyle - as he watched sophomore Jasmine Lyons, freshman Lisa Nystedt and junior Luci Anderson perform.
"Jas was in a group of about the fifth to tenth spots and Lisa was right in there, too, and Luci was just outside the top 20," Schwartz said. "Watching where Montana and a couple of other schools were, we knew we were going to move up if they finished well."
They finished very well, especially Lyons. She kept coming and picked off racers along the way and ended up third, behind a pair of University of Utah skiers, Sophia Laukli and Novie McCabe, both of whom competed for the United States in February at the Olympics in Beijing.
Nystedt was 15th and Anderson 24th and the three women led UNH to third in the event and lifted the Wildcats to that sixth-place overall finish.
The only time UNH turned in a better finish was in 1971 when the men were fifth.
Schwartz was pleased with the season overall, but in particular the last couple of competitions.
The UNH Carnival, hosted by the school at Jackson Nordic and Cannon/Mittersill, doubled as the Eastern Intercollegiate Skiing Association Championships and NCAA East Regionals and gave a preview of what was to come.
There, the Wildcats were an impressive second to Vermont.
UNH held its spot and was the second team in the East behind Vermont on the NCAA stage as well. Utah won its third straight NCAA title and Vermont was second with Denver, the University of Colorado and Alaska-Anchorage leading into the Wildcats.
Blank and his alpine skiers had their last competition on Friday at Park City Mountain Resort and were there to cheer the Nordic men and then women on at Soldier Hollow Resort.
"It was an exciting day," Blank said. "It was a lot of fun. At the need of the day, the team result is the ultimate goal for sure and everyone played their part."
Schwartz and Blank are both excited about continuing to raise the bar for the program. Each team loses athletes to graduation, but has a solid core back as well, including those who competed in the NCAAs this year and others who came close and will be striving to achieve that goal.
Lyons, an alternate on the Canadian Olympic team this year, and Luci Anderson will be back on the Nordic side and all three of the men Nordic skiers who competed at the NCAAs – junior Scott Schulz, sophomore Seth Wyatt and freshman Roger Anderson - are back. Nystedt will not return. She is heading home to Sweden.
On the alpine side, grad student Bastian Meisen, who earned first-team All American honors with a fifth place in the giant slalom, has used up his eligibility and fellow grad student Will Bruneau-Bouchard has, too.
Junior Marius Solbakken, who scored in both the slalom and giant slalom races, is back. Sophomore Peder Nersnaes qualified for the NCAAs, but was not one of the three athletes who made the cut for UNH this year and will be looking to change that.
Senior Fanny Sanderberg, 11th in the slalom, graduates. Freshman Zoe Michael was a second team All American thanks to her 10th place finish in slalom and returns.
Lisa Olsson, an NCAA qualifier in years past, just missed making it this year and is excited about returning to the team next year and taking another shot at the NCAAs as a grad student.
Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu
Players Mentioned
Nordic
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Nordic
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Nordic
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Nordic
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Alpine
/ Skiing
Nordic
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Alpine
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Nordic
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