Purgatory Ski Team (now Durango Winter Sports Club) alum Nick Unkovskoy was named a Division 1 first-team All-American after finishing third in the men’s giant slalom at the NCAA alpine ski championships on March 11 in Park City, Utah.
Unkovskoy is a junior racing for the Panthers at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, majoring in economics, holding a 3.98 GPA.
Qualifying to compete at the NCAA skiing championships is an impressive result on its own. Athletes need to qualify for NCAA championships. From there, each college team can only bring three men and three women who had qualified for the NCAA championships. Middlebury qualified more than three men and three women, but only three men and three women were selected by the coach to represent.
The men’s alpine field at the NCAA’s is comprised of the best 16 athletes from the west division and the best 16 athletes from the east division (32 total). Typically, a college race in the east coast has 100 athletes racing each week and similar field of athletes in the west coast racing. Out of approximately a field of 200+ athletes, only 32 men qualify to compete at the NCAA’s.
Unkovskoy third-place result landed him on the first-team All American group since first through fifth made first team and sixth through 10th made second team.
As team captain, Unkovskoy helped lead his team to fifth place overall out of 18 college teams in the Alpine division.
The collegiate ski season has finished after the NCAA alpine ski championships were rescheduled from Montana State/Bridger Bowl to University of Utah/Olympic Park in Park City, Utah due to lack of snow in Montana.
Next up Unkovskoy heads to a few national races where he hopes to improve on his standing from last year:
3/21-3/26: Aspen Mountain for the NorAm finals
3/28-3/31: Vail Resort for the U.S. Alpine National Ski Championships, where he placed sixth last year
3/31-4/1: Panorama Mountain Resort, Canada for the Canadian Alpine National Championships, where he finished fourth last year.
