STILL FIGHTING

The UNM ski team is trying to keep its prospects for survival alive

A group of 15 students who skied for the University of New Mexico’s discontinued intercollegiate program gathered Thursday at an off-campus office complex to tell their story.

For now, it includes no Hollywood style ending with someone or something swooping in to save a program that began in 1970, won a national title in 2004 and a bunch of other trophies, three of which they brought along.

“The actual national championship trophy sits in (UNM athletic director) Paul Krebs’ office, ironically,” said Alex Barounos, a sophomore from Steamboat Springs, Colo.

So in the meantime, they set up their own news conference — minus a sympathetic coaching staff and, obviously, other UNM athletic officials — at the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico offices. They wanted to put names and faces on the dollars-and-cents decision UNM made to cut the program.

There is Aljaz Praznik, a Slovenian who has been at UNM for four years and hasn’t been home in two. The senior had just finished his eligibility in 2017 but had a plan for ’18: Coaching and school as a graduate assistant. That’s out the window now.

There is Katharine Irwin, a sophomore from Vail, Colo., who earned second-team All-America status despite playing hurt this past season. The biology major and prospective medical school student showed up with her left arm in a sling and an ice pack on that shoulder. She had arthroscopic surgery earlier this week to repair a torn labrum.

Irwin’s preference was to attend UNM’s med school one day. Now, maybe not.

JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL Patrick Brachner is a junior from Kematen, Austria, and one of the 18 athletes who had eligibility remaining when the University of New Mexico announced last month it would end its ski program.