Swimming
Sitting at 11-2-1, the Utah women’s swimming team has been eyeing this weekend since the season began in September. The men and women will begin competing for the conference championships starting Wednesday. Instead of taking the winter off, the women stacked a three-day meet from Dec. 5 to Dec. 7 in Princeton and then followed that up with back-to-back meets, first against TCU, then against SMU and North Texas. That’s only after they finished up a tough training session in Mexico. All of those efforts have come with the goal of taking first in Mountain West Conference Championships.
Track
It was called the Wildcat Tune-Up, and that’s exactly the way the Utah track team used it.
Langley Iverson won the high jump with a 5-foot-7-inch mark. Teammate Mandi Witherspoon finished second, clearing 5 feet 5 inches. Ashley Patterson dominated the triple jump. Her distance of 37 feet 9.5 inches beat her nearest competition by nearly four feet. Chelsea Kaplar and Brianna LeRoy finished first and second, respectively, in the 55-meter hurdles with times of 8.35 and 8.51 in the championship heat. The Utes begin the Mountain West Conference Championships on Thursday and continue through Saturday in the high altitude of Laramie, Wyo.
Skiing
The Utah ski team finished sixth at the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Skiing Association Championships this past weekend.
Utah qualified a full team for the upcoming NCAA Championships in Rumford and Newry, Maine, starting on March 11, but were led by Even Sletten, Ben Fick and Annelies Cook in the freestyle events.
Sletten finished 12th overall in the 15 kilometer freestyle event, finishing in 36 minutes and 54.8 seconds. Fick finished less than a second behind for 13th place (35:55.2). Ian Havlick also managed to pick up points for the Utes, finishing in 21st place with a 37:54.5 finish.
Cook lead the women with a 30:52.7 finish in the 10-km freestyle, which was good enough for 11th place. Zoe Roy finished in 15th place in 31:12.
As a team, the Utes finished with 444 points. New Mexico finished first with 565 points, followed by Colorado and Nevada, who had 539 and 485 points, respectively. Denver finished two points out of third place with 483 points, while Alaska-Anchorage narrowly beat out the Utes with 447 points.
Compiled by Tony Pizza