Pyeongchang 2018

EIGHT DAYS DOWN, EIGHT TO GO

Halfway through the Games, Team USA has collected nine medals in eight different events. Today, collegiate athletes competed in cross-country skiing, ice hockey and skeleton.

Cross-country skiing

Team USA skiers placed an impressive fifth in the women’s 4x5k relay at the Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Center Saturday evening in PyeongChang. The finish marked the best-ever relay finish for an American women’s team at the Olympic Games.

The college-dominant quartet of Sophie Caldwell (Dartmouth), Sadie Bjornsen (Alaska Pacific), Kikkan Randall (Alaska Pacific) and Jessie Diggins completed the race in 52:44.8, just 1:20.5 slower than the gold medal-winning pace of 51:24.3 from Norway.

Read more on the race at TeamUSA.org.

Men’s hockey

Despite outshooting its opponent 29-26, Team USA fell to Olympic Athletes from Russia, 4-0, at the Gangneung Hockey Centre.

Chris Bourque (Boston University), Brian Gionta (Boston College) and Jordan Greenway (Boston University) led Team USA with four shots on goal apiece. On the other end of the ice, U.S. goaltender Ryan Zapolski (Mercyhurst) turned away 22 of 26 shots on the night.

Nikolai Prokhorkin netted OAR’s first two goals – one at the end of the first period, and one in the second period. Ilya Kovalchuk scored in the second and third period to give OAR the 4-0 victory.

Team USA will return to the Olympic ice Tuesday in the qualification playoff round.

Read more about the game on TeamUSA.org.

Skeleton

Colorado club soccer athlete, Kendall Wesenberg, maintained her 17th-place standing through the final two heats of the women’s skeleton race Saturday at the Olympic Sliding Center.

The first-time Olympian finished all four runs with a cumulative time of 3:30.92, only 3.64 seconds off the gold medal-pace of 3:27.28.