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At CS Northridge, Ski Team Cuts Rug to Sharpen Skills

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Times Staff Writer

Jean-Claude Killy didn’t have to practice on Herculon to become the Hercules of ski racing, but the members of Cal State Northridge’s ski team weren’t lucky enough to be born in Saint-Cloud, France.

Every Thursday around 9 p.m., up to six of the team’s 37 racers lock down their Langes and climb onto their K2s for a few minutes on the motorized carpet mountain at Ski & Sports West in Granada Hills.

According to Branko Sevic, a freshman member of the team, the carpet feels like ice. It races, however, like a 6-m.p.h. bedroom.

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“You can simulate the gate experience by tossing socks onto the rug,” he said.

If they become adept enough at dodging footwear in Granada Hills, they’ll have a good shot at, maybe, fifth place in the Southern California Collegiate Ski Conference. The league, one of 10 in the National Collegiate Ski Assn., is made up of 22 teams from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the north to San Diego State in the south.

Big schools in the conference, such as USC and UC San Diego, usually ski away with team first place because their budgets allow more opportunities to practice on snow with professional coaches. Racers at the smaller schools, such as Northridge and Caltech, are normally left to scramble for individual trophies in the league’s two events: slalom and giant slalom.

The Matador women’s team finished second last year, however, because it had two of the best ringers in the conference. Most teams in the West include racers who have left, for personal or educational reasons, the national teams of countries such as Canada or Switzerland.

Meg Mackenzie, who grew up on skis in Lake Tahoe and skied on the Rocky Mountain Development Team--the Triple-A farm club of the U. S. Ski Team--transferred to CSUN after mashing her knee in a race. She had to decide between the World Cup and a career in media management, she said, and she chose the career. She enrolled at Northridge, joining the team while taking classes toward a degree in radio, television and film.

Mackenzie finished first in league last season and seventh in the NCSA nationals, which took place in McCall, Ida. Out of eligibility this year, she won’t be able to do much more than cheer on this season’s team.

“I’ll miss racing a lot,” said Mackenzie, who throws the javelin on the school track team. “Racing became enjoyable here. It was less intense, but still had a competitive type of feeling. And there wasn’t as much work involved in dry-land training. In fact, it was up to you.”

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Another top CSUN racer last season, Keiko Tanaka, was an exchange student who had competed on the Japanese development ski team.

Two years ago, CSUN’s top five racers went to the national finals--helping the Matadors finish No. 11 nationally. Mackenzie finished fourth in individual women’s competition; teammate Carol Rivington, a transfer student from Canada, finished 11th. This season, the team probably will not do as well.

“Basically we’re starting with a brand-new team,” said Paul Richardson, one of the team’s two coaches. “We have some people returning, but no one who was exceptionally fast last year.”

Richardson is at a disadvantage when it comes to stocking his team because anyone at the school can join. To get money from the university’s student body fund, the team is organized as a club. And clubs can’t limit membership.

The waiver of responsibility on the NCSA competitor form probably excludes most beginners, however. Part of it reads, capital letters included:

“I, the undersigned . . . understand that there are natural and man-made obstacles of hazards . . . that can cause me VERY SERIOUS INJURY or even DEATH.”

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Richardson, a commercial real estate salesman who raced on the team from 1980 to ‘84, said he cannot guess how the team will do this year because, even at this late date, he hasn’t seen anyone on skis.

“One of the unfortunate things about ski teams out here is that the snow starts to drop around finals time--and no one wants to take time out to go skiing as a team,” he said.

That contrasts sharply with the attitude of ski teams in the Midwest and Northeast. John Redfield, president of the the Southern California Collegiate Ski Conference, said that he trained every day on snow as a racer in the early 1970s while attending the University of Utah,

“Sometimes we’d take Saturday off,” he said from his office in Newport Beach, “but we’d run gates all the time.”

Southern California teams mostly do dry-land workouts, such as bicycling and playing soccer, to build strength and endurance. They try to get on a local hill such as Goldmine or Snow Summit at least twice a month. The price of racing is prohibitive.

“A typical racer will spend upwards of $5,000 a season on lodging, lift tickets, equipment and food,” said Redfield, who was captain of the USC ski team in 1976 and ’77.

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Southern California teams, unlike their counterparts in the East, are not supported by their schools’ athletic departments. Most are like the team at Northridge, which sells duffel bags and holds raffles to supplement the $1,225 received from the school’s general student activities fund, according to CSUN team president Alison Sanford.

Last week in Granada Hills, CSUN co-Coach Robin Peacock called racers onto the carpet at 10 p.m. for a training session. Dressed in jeans and a backward black beret, he looked more like an Austrian ski commando than a trainer. Then he pushed a button and the carpet-mountain began to hum. So did Peacock, as he waved his arms around like a symphony conductor and took huge bites out of a mushroom-bacon burger.

“When you think you’ve bent your ankles enough, bend them some more,” he yelled up to team member Robert Delgenkolb, who was on the ramp.

Delgenkolb nodded and bent.

“When you’re running a giant slalom, it’s not the person who gets to the gates quickest who wins, it’s the one who . . . “

The rest of Peacock’s instructions were drowned out by the ski machine, which makes it sound like you’re skiing in a bottling plant in spite of the tree and snowcapped-mountain motif on its flanking walls.

It takes a long time for teams to progress when they are restricted by a lack of money and nearby snow. The Thursday evening ramp time is donated by the ski shop, and the team is looking for a sponsor.

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Despite the hardships, competition in the conference is fierce but unfrenzied, according to Redfield.

“The teams really go at it head-to-head,” he said. “But there is a lot of camaraderie, too. The Eastern teams are super competitive--more like the football teams--and would blow any of us away.”

The Southern California conference’s racing season begins Jan. 4 at Mammoth Mountain and continues on weekends at one- and two-week intervals at Goldmine, June Mountain and Mammoth until March 30. The NCSA championships will be held Feb. 24 to March 1 in Killington, Vt.

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