COLCHESTER, Vt. - Four Saint Michael's College skiers have been chosen for the NCAA National Collegiate Championship, it was announced on Tuesday, qualifying for an event that involves student-athletes from Division I, II and III. This marks the fifth time in seven years at least four Purple Knights will attend the championship, with this year's four-day event beginning on March 6 in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
 
Alpine senior Simen Strand (Nedre Høvik, Norway/Dønski VGS) and junior Helene Kristoffersen (Rælingen, Norway/Dønski VGS) will make their third NCAA appearances, while sophomore Gray Flanagan (West Burke, Vt./Green Mountain Valley School) is set for his second. First-year Henrik Wist (Trondheim, Norway/Heimdal VGS) provides the Nordic squad its first NCAA qualifier since 1999.
 
Strand, who landed his third career Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA) All-East honor last weekend, has posted eight top-five showings in 12 starts, including six podium performances, which featured his first career victory on Feb. 18, a slalom triumph in an NCAA qualifier. He notched a trio of runner-up showings, with two in giant slalom and one in slalom, and placed third in GS and seventh in slalom during the Middlebury College Carnival/EISA Championship. Strand, a second-year captain, was instrumental in men's Alpine finishing top five eight times in 10 EISA carnival events. He owns a school-record-tying three All-America finishes, having placed on the first team in slalom as a sophomore and second team for GS each of the past two seasons.
 
Kristoffersen, who won the EISA GS points title last winter, was All-America in the GS as a first-year and sophomore, and remains the only woman skier in College annals to land an All-America nod even once. She joined Anna Willassen '20 as the lone Saint Michael's woman skiers to qualify three times for an NCAA Championship. Kristoffersen was top 21 in 10 of her 11 regular-season starts, including finishing as runner-up during the Harvard University GS on Feb. 4 and taking ninth at the Williams College GS on Feb. 16.
 
Flanagan, also an All-American last year thanks to placing ninth in the NCAA Championship GS, won this year's season-opening Colby College GS on Jan. 19. He added a 10th-place GS performance at EISAs, his fourth career top-10 showing. Flanagan was named 2023 Vermont Alpine Racing Association (VARA) Collegiate Skier of the Year last summer.
 
Wist becomes the fifth Purple Knight Nordic skier to qualify for the NCAA Championship, and the second man, joining Jens Johansson '00. Johansson's appearance at the 1999 NCAA Championship was the third by a Saint Michael's Nordic skier in four years, with Amy Vile '98 (1998) and Hege Vethe '98 (1996) also going, but no representative had qualified since. Wist posted six top-21 showings as a rookie, including winning the mass-start 15K classic at Dartmouth College on Feb. 10 for the first victory by a Purple Knight Nordic skier in 28 years. He added two top-six sprint performances and a 15th in the Harvard mass-start 15K classic on Feb. 2.
 
Thanks single-handedly to the Alpine team, Saint Michael's placed a program-record 11th with a record 145 points at the 2023 NCAA Championship. At least three Alpine skiers have now qualified for the NCAA Championship seven times since 2016; prior to that, neither the Alpine nor Nordic squads had ever sent more than one competitor to an NCAA Championship. Fifteen of the 23 qualifiers in College history have come in Gus MacLeod's '02 14-year tenure as head coach, with those 15 accounting for 30 qualifications. MacLeod, the 2017 and 2022 EISA Alpine Skiing Coach of the Year, saw his charges podium eight times this winter. A fourth Purple Knight narrowly missed the cut for NCAAs, as first-year Aidan Robin (Stowe, Vt./Burke Mountain Academy) was one of the last skiers trimmed from the list.
 
Now in her 12th year as Nordic head coach, Molly Peters has her squad in historic territory. Purple Knights turned in 15 top-25 individual performances this year, while her men scored fourth-place points twice during the Dartmouth Carnival. In addition to Wist's NCAA qualification, senior Grace Castonguay (Jackson, N.H./Kennett) and junior Declan Hutchinson (Duluth, Minn./Marshall School) narrowly fell short in their pursuit. Also the men's and women's cross country head coach, Peters sent a runner to last fall's NCAA Championship and becomes the first coach in College history to qualify the school for NCAAs in multiple different sports, not only in a school year but a career. Her first runner went in 2013, and the women's team made it in 2014.
 
One hundred and forty eight skiers will take part in Alpine and Nordic races at the national championship. In Alpine, 34 men and 34 women skiers will compete, including 17 apiece from the East Region, and on the Nordic side, 40 men and 40 women were chosen, with 17 each from the East. Alpine begins with GS on March 6 at 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time/11:30 a.m. Eastern Time at Steamboat Resort before slalom will run on historic Howelsen Hill on March 8 at 6:40 p.m. MT/8:40 p.m. ET. Wist and the Nordic skiers will compete at Howelsen Hill throughout for the 7.5K freestyle on March 7 at 10 a.m. MT/12 p.m. ET and mass-start 20K classic on March 9 at 12 p.m. MT/2 p.m. ET. The NCAA Championship will be webcast live on NCAA.com/liveschedule. Complete multimedia links will be available through SMCAthletics.com.