Heading into Sunday’s team time trials, on the final day at USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals, it was a race for second place in the team omnium.
Fort Lewis was well behind the dominant Marian University team at the start of Sunday’s action. The only question was whether the Skyhawks would hang on to second place, and they did.
With 395 points after the male and female teams took third and fifth, respectively, in the team time trials, the Skyhawks placed a distant second place to the 542 points Marian posted.
Midwestern State finished third with 345 points.
Individually, it was Sofia Gomez-Villafañe leading the way with a fourth-place finish in the individual omnium to end her storied career at Fort Lewis. It was a highly successful road effort for Gomez-Villafañe who hadn’t been on the road racing team since her freshman year. FLC’s Jenna MacPherson came in 16th, Emily Abraham got 31st and Sydney Edmonson came in 45th.
Topping the individual omnium standings for the Fort Lewis men was Ian McPherson, who finished 11th. Ryan Standish came in 20th and Emmanuel Gagne was 23rd.
In what was a common theme for the weekend, Marian University added to its lead Sunday as a slim 2.9 seconds advantage was good enough to edge second-place Midwestern State in the men’s team time trials.
The Skyhawks’ time of 38 minutes 41.56 seconds was 1:13.33 behind another winning pace set by the dominant Marian squad.
The Marian women made it a clean sweep in the team time trials with a time of 43:40. Stanford came in second, 41 seconds back and University of California–San Diego came in third. Fort Lewis’ time of 45:10 gave Skyhawks a fifth-place finish.
In the individual time trials, FLC’s Cormac McGeough was best for the Skyhawks with an 18th place finish. His time of 28:19.38 was just over two minutes behind the winner, Stefan Rothe, from Midwestern State. Durango’s Sepp Kuss, who races for University of Colorado Boulder, took seventh place with a time of 27:23.00. Kuss also finished seventh in the men’s individual omnium.
Troy Meeker finished 36th in 29:36.16 for the Skyhawks, while Thomas Gauthier was 46th (30:33.55) and Kolby Preble came in 51st (32:24.63). Edmonson’s 34:29.64 time gave her 22nd place in the women’s individual time trial.
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