FAIRBANKS, Alaska - The Alaska Nanooks men's and women's cross country and skiing teams celebrated their many successes achieved over the 2011-12 school year last weekend and delved out two of their four team awards, including Most Improved and Teammate of the Year honors. The teams' Scholar Athletes and Most Valuable Runners & Skiers will be announced at Saturday night's All-Sports Banquet, set for 6:30 p.m. at the Princess Riverside Lodge.
Taking home the most improved awards were
Tux Seims for the men's cross country team and
Heather Edic for the women's team.
Seims was among Alaska's top four runners all season and capped off his sophomore season with a men's team-best 67th place finish at the NCAA West Region Championships in early November.
For Edic, her second season proved equally as rewarding. She opened the year with a pair of third place finishes in Alaska's own Interior Invitational, leading the women's team of finishers in the six and four-kilometer events, and finished fourth or better for the Nanooks the rest of the season.
On the skiing side, senior
Ian Wilkinson was recognized as the most improved, while junior
Crystal Pitney garnered the women's award.
Wilkinson came on strong when it counted the most, taking eight in the men's 20K classic to help the men's team secure the program's third Central Collegiate Ski Association Championship title and first since 2006. He followed that performance with a pair of top-20 finishes at the NCAA Central Region Championships, where the Nanooks finished second to Northern Michigan.
Pitney, who transferred to UAF after two seasons of running for the Colorado State Rams, saddled the momentum gained from the history-making women's cross country season in the fall and rode it into an impressive junior ski season. The Fairbanks-native led the Nanooks in their NCAA Championship debut with a 52nd place finish in the final cross country race of her career and then exceeded expectations, qualifying for the 2012 NCAA Skiing Championships after earning Second Team All-CCSA honors and recording two top-10 finishes at the Central Region Championships in mid-Februrary.
Also recognized were the four squads' Teammates of the Year. Seims and Pitney each collected their second award, while seniors
Jana Benedix and
Alex Morris were picked by the women's cross country and men's ski teams, respectively.
