Lady Flames skier Josie Rich finished first in both the USCSA Rail Jam and Big Air competitions at the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre on Feb. 8-9 as well as in this past Saturday's Rail Jam at Massanutten Resort. (Photos by Emily Cuthrell)
Skiers, snowboarders excel at Snowflex, fare well at Massanutten; USCSA Regionals up next at Wintergreen
Liberty swept the men's and women's ski & snowboard Rail Jam and Big Air competitions Feb. 8-9 at the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre before experiencing mixed results at their final USCSA Southeast regular-season event near JMU.
Liberty University's men's and women's ski & snowboard teams concluded their regular seasons this past weekend with a USCSA Southeast Rail Jam competition at Massanutten Resort near Harrisonburg, Va.
The Flames' men's skiers experienced the most success, sweeping the top three places to win the team competition with 6 points in front of JMU (19) and the University of Virginia (23). Senior Coby Liebelt captured gold with his top run while freshmen Eli Malek struck silver and Jack Albee earned bronze. Senior Coby Liebelt won both the men's ski Rail Jam and Big Air events at the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre on Feb. 8-9.
Liberty's men's snowboarders had a close duel with Lees-McRae (N.C.) College, which finished first in the team standings with 10 points with the Flames placing second with 11, well ahead of JMU (25), UVA (36), UNC Charlotte (59), and Appalachian State (65). Individually, Liberty junior Evan Whitlow finished runner-up to Lees-McRae's Kenneth Stanford, and Flames graduate Albrey Gossett landed in third place. LMC's Chance Markland and Luke Elting placed fourth and fifth, respectively, barely beating out Liberty senior Zachary Ries who came in sixth.
For the Lady Flames, Josie Rich finished first in the women's ski competition followed by fellow senior Darah Osborne in fourth place, but Liberty did not have a third contestant and landed in second place with 23 points behind JMU (10) and ahead of UVA (27) and Duke (45).
Liberty's women's snowboarders were led by the first-place finish of graduate Maddie Morgan, but she was the Lady Flames' only scorer and her score alone put them in third place overall with 41 team points, behind ASU (13) and UVA (23) and ahead of JMU (43), LMC (48), and Duke (51).
On Feb. 8-9, Liberty hosted Rail Jam and Big Air competitions at Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre, where the Flames and Lady Flames swept first place team finishes in both events.
"Overall, the teams looked confident because it is our home turf, so they felt right at home," Liberty Head Coach Tyler Sherbine said.
In the Rail Jam, the men's and women's skiers both had the first- and second-place individuals. Liebelt (42.9) and Malek (38.8) paced the men to a 7-point total with UVA (21) and JMU (25) landing in second and third place as teams. Jack Swartzentruber (34.7), who was called up from the developmental squad this semester, and fellow freshman Asa Greene (34) and Albee (33.7) finished fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively. Freshman Jack Swartzentruber finished fourth in the men's ski Rail Jam at Snowflex before sustaining a shoulder injury in the Big Air.
"Eli Malek put on a clinic on the staple (Rail Jam feature)," Sherbine said, noting he did a 270-degree unnatural (spinning the opposite way as normal) on the pretzel two feature. "That adds an extra flair and is honestly a really hard trick. Not many people do that. He kind of went through his whole bag of tricks and Coby Liebelt was backing him up, going head-to-head."
For the women, Rich (24.4) and senior Lauren Harder (16.5), who suffered a lower-body injury on her last run, finished 1-2 for an 8-point team total to place in front of JMU (13) and UVA (14).
"Lauren was doing a broken slide, ironically, where you dip your knee down," Sherbine said. "It was really cool, really stylish, but it grabbed her ski in a way that tweaked her knee and hamstring."
Men's snowboarders Whitlow (36), Ries (27.9), and sophomore Kyle Pafford (21.6) posted a 1-2-4 showing to lead the Flames to a 7-point total and first-place finish in front of LMC (18), JMU (30), and UVA (42). Meanwhile, Morgan's 19.8 run allowed the women's snowboarders (7 points) to take first place ahead of UVA (8), as the Cavaliers had the only other competitor.
For the Big Air event, not typically a part of USCSA competitions, Liberty was even more dominant with Morgan the only women's snowboarder and landing a 26.5-point jump. Ries (43.7), Gossett (33.7), and Whitlow (30), meanwhile, provided a 1-3-4 finish as the Flames' snowboarders (8) separated themselves from LMC (13) and JMU (28).
On the ski side, Rich was the only female competitor and won by landing a 29.7 combined score by the three judges. For the men, Liebelt (54.2), sophomore Blake Stillman (44.5), and Greene (32.8) led a 1-2-3 Flames finish to put them in first as a team over JMU, 6-22.
"Coby Liebelt did a switch (540-degree spin) on skis," Sherbine said of approaching the Big Air jump backwards and doing two and a half rotations before landing forwards. "Blake Stillman was looking really good with some flat (540s) and flat (720s) jump tricks on skis. Kyle Pafford looked really comfortable and showed a lot of style with some (360s) and Aubrey (Gossett) was looking pretty confident and stylish on the snowboard." Senior skier Lauren Harder placed second in the women's Rail Jam before injury.
The Flames and Lady Flames, who graduated most of their top snowboarders from last year's USCSA National Championship squads, have been hit by the injury bug this season. Besides Harder, a national champion as a freshman who returned to the team after spending last season on the LU Dance team, the Flames lost junior skier Cam Brandenburg to a knee injury in the fall semester, senior men's ski captain Charlie Barkow to a torn ACL before their first USCSA competition at Beech Mountain, and Schwartzentruber to a shoulder injury in the Big Air competition at Snowflex.
"We have been plagued by injuries this season, probably twice as many as in previous years," Sherbine said. "The (Club Sports) athletic trainers help us out so much as far as recovery, so just taking advantage of the new facility (on the second floor of the North Campus Garage), which is honestly really nice."
"It's really hard to see some of those old guys' seasons be over, but then to see some of the new guys come in and get to fill their roles and get to explore competition themselves is such a beautiful thing," added Liebelt, who serves as his team's Disciple Maker. "This is my last go-around, so I am definitely thankful to get to be riding with these guys. Normally, I'm the first one to go. I'm the one that everybody says is injury-prone, so I'm thankful that my body is holding up and that I am healthy right now."
He said injuries are a part of the sport, but it hasn't kept the Flames and Lady Flames from pushing their limits.
"It's a hard mental game for everybody else on the team of 'How much do I keep trying to progress and how much do I try to save for nationals?'" Liebelt said. "I want to push it, I want to go big. It's a toss-up every time, but we know we're out here to compete. You play with fire every time you strap up your boots and we know that, so you've just got to come out and give it everything you've got."
This weekend, the Flames and Lady Flames will enter as many healthy competitors as possible from their travel squads to their practice slopes away from Snowflex, Wintergreen Resort, to compete in the USCSA Southeast Regional Championships, with the Rail Jam set for Saturday followed by Slopestyle competition Saturday. Those events serve as qualifiers for the March 10-15 USCSA National Championships hosted by Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Ore., where Liberty is planning to send 15 total team members.
"Basically, from here on out, we're cruising until the end of nationals," Sherbine said.
"We might be limping along a little bit, but I think once we hit regionals and nationals, hopefully, we'll be at a spot where we're at full strength," Liebelt added.
By Ted Allen/Staff WriterFreshman Eli Malek excelled in the Rail Jam and Big Air events at Snowflex as well as in the Rail Jam at Massanutten.
