HANOVER, N.H. (ABC4 Sports) - The University of Utah returned to the pinnacle of the collegiate skiing world on Saturday as the Utes won their 17th national title all-time—and fifth in the last six seasons—with the conclusion of the 2025 NCAA Championships.
Including this season, this is the 16th NCAA crown won by the Utah Ski Team. The 17th overall was a women's-only AIAW national victory in 1978—at that time, women's championships hadn't yet been brought under the NCAA umbrella.
Hosted by Dartmouth College, the Utes raced alpine events on Wednesday and Friday at the Dartmouth Skiway, while Nordic competitions went down at Oak Hill on Thursday as well as earlier today.
The old adage of "it's a marathon, not a sprint" held true for Utah in the quest for this year's championship. The Utes were third in the meet standings coming off Wednesday's slalom and trailed by 61 points. It was not insurmountable by any means, but the Utes needed to turn the page quickly from slalom and respond with solid results the final three days.
And respond they did. Erica Lavén had a commanding victory in the women's 7.5K classic on Thursday before Johs Braathen Herland kept the momentum going with a title in men's giant slalom Friday afternoon.
A strong finish was still needed today in the 20K freestyle to secure the national championship and Joe Davies helped put on the exclamation point with a commanding victory—by over a minute—in the men's race. Then in the women's competition, Lavén put on a good battle with Kendall Kramer of Alaska Fairbanks before finishing as the national runner-up.
"This was just amazing up here, especially in front of this crowd," said director of skiing Fredrik Landstedt. "There's a huge amount of people out here and a band playing. It's just incredible to have this kind of finish. I'm super proud of this team, how they came together and the camaraderie they've shown—really the way to fight back during the championship.
"The team really stayed positive (after Wednesday). You can lead by a lot or you can be far behind after one day. It's a long championship. They knew that it changes fast and anything can happen. They were in good spirits still. To comeback the way they did was just incredible."
Davies' victory today made him the 89th individual champion in recorded Utah history. He, Brian Bushey (3rd) and Zachary Jayne (10th) each earned All-American honors with Lavén (2nd) and Selma Nevin (5th) earning the same laurels in the women's race. Utah finished the meet with 17 All-Americans over the four days and eight events—the most of any team.
Celine Mayer made her second NCAA Championships start and contributed a 19th place finish on the women's side.
The men's race went off at 10 a.m. Eastern Time after some light snow came down overnight and flurries continued early in the morning. When the mass start came around, Davies was in the fifth starting position, Bushey 10th and Jayne No. 20 in the three-lane starting area. The 20K distance worked out to six laps for both the men and women.
Davies (43:34.0) never left the front pack and absolutely dominated the men's race. He and Dartmouth's John Steel Hagenbuch waged a great battle for the first three laps as the packed crowd cheered loudly. But Davies revved the engine on the fourth lap and had built a pad of nearly 40 seconds by the time he came back into the stadium to begin the final stretch. Individual victory assured, he had enough time to pick up a Utah flag as he turned toward the finish corral and wave it coming across the line.
Davies said, "After such a tight race last year and coming down to the small points margin, it felt really good to win by such a big margin this year. With third place (in the classic Thursday) I'm not going to be upset about it, but it for sure wasn't how I was hoping it would go. After that, the plan was to go as hard as I possibly could today. So long as I went as hard as I could, I would be happy with it. Luckily it played out in my favor."
As the first lap came to a close with an uphill climb, Bushey was right there with Davies and Hagenbuch fighting for the lead. He fell a little behind Hagenbuch at the 10K split but still turned in solid laps on the second half of the race to build a 29-second pad on the fourth-place finisher and clock a time of 45:11.0. He was racing this week about an hour's drive down Interstate 89 from his hometown of Montpelier, Vermont.
Called upon as an alternate earlier this week, Jayne recovered from a broken pole early in the race to still remain in the top-10. He was in a pack battling for the top-eight that were separated by just three seconds. He crossed the finish line with a time of 46:08.0. Walker Hall, who was in the original lineup for Utah, was unable to race due to illness and substituted by Jayne. Hall still made the trip to New Hampshire and was on-hand supporting his teammates.
With 95 points secured and a race victory in the men's 20K freestyle, Utah could feel confident about national championship hopes but not certain going into the women's race—anything can happen in college skiing.
Lavén earned the No. 2 spot in the starting lanes with Nevin at No. 12 and Mayer slotted No. 29—again in a three-lane starting area. It was a fast start for much of the field, but Lavén was in a group of four that broke away on the first lap and was within about three seconds of each other coming back into the stadium to begin the second lap.
She and Kramer put on some phenomenal racing all throughout this season in RMISA competitions and the whole country got to watch another battle today. Lavén pulled in front of Kramer at the 6.7K split and was within three-tenths of a second at the 10K mark. Lavén remained in front after four laps but Kramer turned on the jets on the fifth lap to take a lead she would not relinquish.
Still, Lavén had plenty enough of a cushion behind her to secure the silver medal with a time of 50:50.0. All of her 13 starts this season netted a podium result.
"It feels so good to win (the national championship)," Lavén said. "The whole team is so happy. We did awesome. Kendall had an amazing day today. I felt already in the beginning that I needed to work really hard to keep up with her. It was so fun seeing her have a really good day. It was a bummer that I didn't feel that good (to win), but I kept on fighting and found my way to second place. That was really good."
Coming back into the stadium to begin the second lap, Nevin was close behind that lead group and still in the top-five after an opening lap that clocked at 8:02.4. She briefly fell to seventh after two laps but worked her way back into the fold and posted a top-two time for the last lap to finish fifth (51:31.0).
Mayer remained in the top-20 for the entire day and her teammates cheered her into the finish corral with a time of 53:52.0 to place 19th and secure a women's team total of 78 points. Moments later, it became official that Utah was back on top and had won its 17th national championship.
Since Landstedt took the reins of the Utah Ski Team in Summer 2018, the program has won five NCAA Championships (2019, '21, '22, '23, '25). Head alpine coach JJ Johnson has been at Utah for that entire stretch, while assistant alpine coach Mary Joyce has been on staff for the last four team crowns. For first-year head Nordic coach Pierre Niess, it's the first victory in the national meet.
Landstedt added, "We knew (in the Fall) that we would be in it. But you never know until you start skiing. We have a few months of dryland training before we put on our skis. You can look really great in the Fall and still be down in the Winter. It doesn't take too much to lose a lot of points. NCAAs are so special. It's different, it's always tighter than any competition during the year.
"We had some big shoes to fill this year to replace NCAA champions on our team that left. For Johs to win the giant slalom in his first year and Erica being a champion as a freshman, of course the way Selma finished today—another freshman. That, mixed between them and our seniors, it was just great to see the way they came together and supported each other."