ELDORO, COLO. – Georgia Burgess finished fifth in the giant slalom to lead the Alaska Anchorage ski team at the University of Colorado Spencer James Nelson Memorial Invitational Thursday.
Burgess finished in a time of 1:56.74.
Li Djurestaal finished 13th (1:57.70), and Alix Wells was 22nd (1:59.97).
Sky Kelsey was in 26th (56.56) after the first run but posted the fastest time on run two by a second to finish sixth (1:53.80).
Tony Naciuk and Didrik Nilsen's second runs both ranked in the top-10 to finish 17th (1:54.77) and 18th (1:54.80).
Michael Soetaert was 31st (1:56.75), Dominic Unterberger 32nd (1:57.25) and Martins Onskulis was 41st (1:58.73).
“It's a dog fight,” said head coach Sparky Anderson. “We battled through some pretty rugged conditions today. Georgia helped us out with a top-5 and Li stayed on the right side of 15 to score some points. The guys kept their foot in the door first run by moving into the flip. That provided us with an opportunity to take advantage of an early start second run. Sky threw down a very impressive second run. Torched the field by a full second. He's got the ground speed. If it gets consistent he'll be a legit threat to the PAC-12 guys. All in all we kept it close. We'll hope for a good day from the Nordic side and a solid approach to slalom tomorrow. We can move up on the weekend for sure.”
Tuva Norbye of Denver won the women's race (1:54.98), and Tobias Kogler of Denver won the men's race (1:52.32).
Denver leads the team standings with 169 points, followed by Utah (159), Montana State (130), New Mexico (126), Colorado (119) and Alaska Anchorage (117).
UAA will compete in the slalom races Friday.
