Fort Lewis College, the proud owners of 21 national championships and a strong cycling tradition, had won eight consecutive mountain bike collegiate national championships.
Then, Sepp Kuss and Emily Schaldach, a pair of Durangoans and fellow Durango DEVO alumni, helped the University of Colorado to the top of the mountain last weekend in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.
Colorado won the Division I national championship with 709 points, 47 points ahead of FLC.
Marian University finished second in the omnium standings with 885 points, while FLC was third with 662 points.
Colorado State finished eighth with 264 points.
Brevard College ran away with the Division II national championship, beating runner-up Colorado Mesa and third-place Western State by more than 200 points.
Neither Kuss or Schaldach competed for individual omnium championships, but they made their impressions felt in the events they did compete in for the Buffaloes.
Kuss won the men’s short track cross country race, just ahead of Luke Vrouwenvelder of the University of North Carolina, who won the men’s individual omnium championship. Stephan Davoust and Payson McElveen, who shared Durango DEVO kits with Kuss and Schaldach, finished third and fourth for FLC in the men’s race.
Levi Kurlander, another local Durango DEVO alum, finished ninth for FLC.
Kuss and Vrouwenvelder again finished 1-2 in the cross country race, while McElveen finished fifth for FLC and Davoust seventh. Michael Sampson and Kurlander finished 15th and 16th for FLC.
Schaldach finished runner-up to Kate Courtney of Stanford in the women’s short track cross country race, just ahead of Sofia Gomez Villafane of FLC, who went on to win the women’s individual omnium championship.
Courtney won the cross country, and Schaldach finished fourth, two spots ahead of Gomez Villafane and three ahead of the Skyhawks’ Jenna MacPherson. FLC freshmen Carley Endersbe and Libbey Endersbe finished 17th and 19th, respectively.
Rebecca Gardner of FLC won both days of the women’s downhill to win a national championship, and she finished third in the dual slalom, won by Heather Collman of Lindsey Wilson College.
Phillip Kmetz of host school Lees-McRae won both days of the downhill and the dual slalom to win two men’s national championships.
Gomez Villafane won the women’s individual omnium by finishing third in the short track, fourth in the cross country, ninth in the first women’s downhill, sixth in the second women’s downhill and 13th in the dual slalom.
Both Gardner and Gomez Villafane defended their respective national championships to go two in a row.
heraldsports@durangoherald.com
