Denver Pioneers skiing athlete Stella Buchheister achieved her first career top-five finish at the Nevada Invitational’s women’s alpine slalom, held at Mount Rose-Ski Tahoe. Buchheister finished fourth with a time of 1:45.62, moving up from 10th after the first run and missing third place by just 0.13 seconds.
“First run, it was definitely good solid skiing. It wasn’t anything crazy, maybe a little bit conservative, so my second run was definitely a fight,” Buchheister said. “I decided to go for it and really attack, even if the conditions weren’t great. It ended up working out, so I’m very happy.”
Buchheister has now recorded three top-10 finishes in four slalom events this season. Last year, her best result was two 11th-place finishes.
“I’m super happy with the start,” Buchheister noted. “I think it’s definitely gone better than last season in pretty much every way. I’m happy with the start and excited to keep building on it.”
Freshman Cecilia Pizzinato also placed in the top 10 for Denver women, finishing seventh. Senior Josephine Trueblood was 13th and Nicola Rountree-Williams took 19th place.
On the men’s side, senior Christian Soevik led Denver with a sixth-place finish in slalom. Adrian Minde Hunshammer finished 10th and Pietro Motterlini came in 11th.
The Denver team is currently second overall in the Nevada Invitational standings with 142 points, trailing Utah by 28 points and ahead of Montana State by 26.5 points in this alpine-only event.
Six Denver skiers did not complete their runs during Sunday’s races due to challenging course conditions that became softer as the day progressed.
Utah’s Johs Herland won his fifth men’s alpine race out of six this season while Melanie Dahlberg and Christian Jacobsen secured first and second places respectively for Utah in the women’s race.
The competition continues Monday with an individual RMISA Alpine Qualifier in giant slalom before concluding Tuesday with additional giant slalom events.
