Adoption Exchange and Season Wrap Up

Last weekend was the final weekend for the SWCCC in Albuquerque, NM. The Adoption Exchange featured an ITT, Crit, and Road Race in two days. The ITT was the conference championship for that event.

Winners for the 20 km ITT were: Joey Iuliano (Men's A, UA), Doug Torres (Men's B, UNM), Chris Zedick (Men's C, NAU), Stefanie Sichler (Women's A, ASU), and Allysen Wendt (Women's B, UA).

The crit started off sunny and slowly became cloudy with gusty winds and a bit of rain. The Men's B saw the worst conditions with rain and wind, while the other categories just had the wind to deal with. The Men's A raced with the P/1/2/3 and the race was blown to shreds in the first lap. UA's Max Rich, Joey Iuliano, and David Carlson were the only collegiate riders to survive the chaos.

Sunday's road race featured a 31 mile loop completed twice for most categories and a 42 mile big loop for the Men's A and P/1/2/3 fields. Each lap had a trip up Heart Break Hill- a long and steep climb early in the lap. The Men's C race was won by NAU's Chris Zedick, the B by UNM's Douglas Torres, and the A by UA's Max Rich. The Women's A was won by UNM's Anona Whitely.

For the omniums, UA remained on top and took home the Division 1 team omnium over ASU. GCU took home the Division 2 award. In the Men's A omnium, Max Rich came in first over teammates David Carlson and last year's winner Joey Iuliano. The Women's A Division 1 omnium was hotly contested and came down to the road race. With current leader Lindsey Ryder (ASU) away, UA's Allison Alterman was able to score enough points to over take her despite the efforts from Ryder's teammates to defend her lead. The Women's A Division 2 omnium was won by Alexis Gannis.

The following teams qualified for nationals:
UA (4 riders for the crit, 6 for the road race)
ASU (4 riders for the crit, 4 for the road race)
NAU (1 rider for each)
GCU (1 rider for each, division 2)

Receiving call ups:
Div 1 Men's Road Race: Quinn Keogh
Div 1 Men's Crit: Max Rich
Div 1 Women's RR: Lindsey Ryder
Div 1 Women's Crit: Riley Pankratz
Div 2 Women's Crit: Alexis Gannis
Div 2 Women's RR: Alexis Gannis

Congrats to everyone and thanks for a fantastic 2014 road season!

Nationals Allocations

With the season nearly over it is time to start thinking about nationals! May will be here before you know it! Here are a few key points:
-You must be an A rider to attend
-You must do 3 mass start races as an A (basically, you need to do the last 2 weekends).

Allocations:
Remember, these are equal numbers for men and women:
Road Race: 12
Crit: 8

Div 2:
RR: 7
Crit: 5
A team cannot bring more than 8 men and women.

We will break it down in the following manner:
The team who wins the "Nationals Qualification Omnium" will be able to send 4 riders for the crit and 6 for the road race (the maximum allowed). Second place will send 3 for the crit and 4 for the road race. The remaining spots will be available to individuals who aren't on a qualifying team. Unused spots will be redistributed to qualifying teams first. So if no individuals go then the unused spots are made available to the second place team (they could in theory take 4 and 6 riders). From that point, unused spots will be given to other conferences. Each qualifying team can have 1 team time trial squad per gender.