Collegiate teams and clubs flocked to Louisville, Kentucky for last week’s Cyclocross National Championships.
Riders competed in numerous events and age groups around the 1.7-mile course inside Joe Creason Park Dec. 5-10.
In the end, Colorado Mesa University won the team national championship. Brevard College from North Carolina finished second, and Fort Lewis College finished third.
“I think the course kind of threw us for a loop this year,” Fort Lewis coach Chad Cheeney said. “It was a lot less technical than that 2018 year, which is part of the fun adventure of cyclocross. You go and you adapt on the course throughout the days, it changes every day. So as far as performance, I think our riders, the women's team just straight crushed and kind of delivered some of the best performances we'd ever had as a team in the frozen stuff. Then our guys weren't as stoked on their performance.”
Fort Lewis’ Kylie Small won the women’s single-speed race with a time of 38 minutes and 19 seconds, 18 seconds ahead of second place Jennifer Malik.
In the collegiate women’s varsity race, Skyhawks juniors Natalie Quinn and Michaela Thompson finished third and fourth, respectively, out of 41 riders. Quinn (46:45) finished 32 seconds behind winner Katie Clouse of Colorado Mesa. Thompson (46:50) was five seconds behind Quinn.
Quinn and Thompson also competed well in other races, with Quinn finishing fourth in the elite women’s race with a time of 41:27 and Thompson finishing fifth in the U23 women’s race.
Both the men and women competed in the varsity relay, too. Quinn, Thompson, freshman Ian Brown and senior George Peipgras helped the Skyhawks finish fourth in the collegiate varsity relay out of nine schools.
Colorado Mesa sophomore and Durango native Ivan Sippy was a part of the Mavericks relay team that won the event with a time of 26:29, which was 29 seconds faster than second place Brevard College and 54 seconds faster than Fort Lewis.
“It went really well,” Sippy said. “It’s a very fun event, kind of stressful in a way because I don't want to mess up my lap and the race for my teammates because normally it's kind of different for us. Normally cycling, you’re only accountable for yourself. So it's fun in an event like that. You think, ‘OK, I’ve got to do well, but I also got to make sure I don't do anything to mess up my team or anything.’”
Sophomore Adrian Magun (50:06) was the top Skyhawk in the collegiate men’s varsity race, finishing sixth out of 59 riders. Magun’s time was 1:12 slower than Brevard College’s Cole Punchard, who won the race. Sophomore Carson Beard finished eighth with a time of 50:11.
Sippy finished third for Colorado Mesa in the collegiate men’s varsity race in 49 minutes, as well as third in the U23 men’s race for Team Segment 28 with a time of 54:42.
Sippy said he was happy with both performances, but was especially happy with the U23 race because there are guys in that race that are cyclocross specialists that have experience in the mud and two nice bikes.
Fort Lewis sophomore Samuel Hart (42:44) finished 15th in the men’s single-speed race, while Piepgras (58:18) was the top Skyhawk in the U23 men’s race as he finished 19th. Cobe Freeburn was the lone Skyhawk to compete in the elite men’s race and he finished 20th with a time of 1:05:53.
Cheeney said one of the toughest aspects of being the coach is deciding who to bring to nationals. The number of riders from Fort Lewis is limited by how expensive it is to send riders to nationals.
Cheeney said he and the other coaches rank the riders based on who can score points, who’s a good teammate and if the nationals experience can help make a rider a future star for the program.
After cyclocross nationals, Fort Lewis’ road racing team is already training together and Cheeney said it should be one of the Skyhawks’ strongest road teams in recent memory.
The first road event is in March, followed by the national championships in Albuquerque in May. Cyclocross will start up again in October.
“We're really young right now actually in both mountain and cross and road,” Cheeney said. “So we have we have the majority of our team returning. We lost one rider, George Piegras and our road team too we lost a longtime star Ava Hachmann who’s a local Durango rider. We’ve got a lot of young stars. That's kind of the trend because they're coming in faster and faster. And it's harder to be upperclassmen and keep the same time and speed.”
Sippy said his main focus is the mountain bike season in the spring and summertime.
“It's funny, you go to nationals and there is kind of that added pressure of nationals,” Sippy said. “But at the same time for us, it's still kind of just feels like another collegiate race just because we're so used to that level of competition just racing in Colorado.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
