Utah Wins Montana State Invitational

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

BOZEMAN, Mont.—The Utah Utes took a Nordic lead and extended it in alpine action to claim the 2025 Montana State Invitational, the first full invitational completed in the 2025 season for the RMISA schools.

The Utes completed the meet sweep, picking up the most women's alpine and men's alpine points in the field to go along with already compiling the most men's Nordic and women's Nordic points, finishing with 713 points and winning the meet by 96 points over Colorado (617) and 107 over Denver (606).

The women's GS race was cut short due to the tracks not holding up and only conducted one run, which does not qualify for an official FIS result but does work by RMISA rules. Utah's Kaila Lafreniere won the race with her first run time of 43.93, just four-hundredths ahead of Justine Lamontagne from MSU (43.97). Louison Accambray from CU was third in 44.07 followed by two more Utes in Kaja Norbye and Tatum Grosdidier, giving the Utes three of the top five finishers.

The men had better luck with course conditions and conducted both runs and Utah's Johs Herland and Sindre Myklebust finished 1-2 to further extend the Utes lead. Westminster's Benjamin Angerer finished third and Denver's Loic Chable took fourth and Isak Staurset from MSU rounded out the top five.

The next day in slalom action, Denver's Sara Rask won in a close race by just eight-hundredths of a second over UAA's Carmen Nielssen. CU's Accambray took third for the second straight race and Tea Kiesel from MSU and the Utes Lafreniere rounded out the top five.

In men's slalom action, CU's Filip Wahlqvist won the race by six-tenths on the strength of a fantastic first run that he won by .73 of a second. Denver's Thomas Hoffman took second with Westminster getting 3-4 with Angerer and Roman Frost taking honors. MSU's Gianluca Boehm rounded out the top five.

Teams now head south to Utah to close out the Utah Invitational with an extra qualifier thrown in. The Nordic teams return to action the same weekend closing out the Denver Invitational.